A delay in dispatching an ambulance to a fatal house fire in Auckland’s Hillpark suburb on May 13 was caused by a glitch in the outdated 111 emergency call system and further hampered by a meeting in the emergency communications centre.
The fire, which resulted in the deaths of two men and serious injury to another, exposed significant flaws in the fragmented InterCAD system that connects emergency services, leading to communication failures.
Documents released to state media by Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) revealed that the system suffered random outages, which had increased significantly from 2021 to early 2024.
During the incident the shift manager was in a meeting when the system failed, delaying the relay of the 111 call to the ambulance service.
While a manual phone call was eventually made, the delay added unspecified time to the emergency response.
Despite implementing a green error message to highlight communication failures, FENZ acknowledged the need for a more modern and integrated emergency response system. However, a project to upgrade the system, which could handle calls, texts, and video, failed to secure funding in the 2023 budget and remains uncertain under the new government.
