On 7 February 2009 , catastrophic bushfires occurred in Victoria , otherwise known as Black Saturday bushfires . Over 18,000 calls to the Triple Zero Emergency Service on that day were left unanswered and the majority of calls took much longer to be answered than usual . Owing to the unprecedented numbers of calls coming through , Telstra decided to isolate all Victorian emergency calls which were answered by the Melbourne emergency call centre with all the remaining calls answered by the Sydney emergency call centre . Telstra also activated the generic extreme event recorded voice announcement '' " You have dialled Emergency Triple Zero . If you require police , fire or ambulance please stay on the line . If you require your local State Emergency Service please hang up and dial 1223 — that ’s 1223 — as this service can not be connected through Triple Zero " '' which temporarily replaced their front end announcement While Telstra records show 95 emergency call centre employees rostered during the 24-hour period on 7 February 2009 , call pick up delays were evident due to lengthy delays at the SECC level , being ESTA . Telstra agents were left tied up on phone calls with callers , waiting for emergency services to answer , thus calls in the 000 queue were unable to be answered . Callers in a queue waiting for a Telstra agent to answer the phone were played an RVA every 30 seconds in the following terms , " You have dialled the Emergency Triple Zero number . Due to an unprecedented high volume of calls being received by Triple Zero , we are experiencing short delays in answering . Please stay on the line and you will be answered by the next available operator " . This reassures callers that an extreme emergency was occurring and their call would be answered
Black Saturday bushfires
Black Saturday bushfires
000 (emergency telephone number)