Ambos speechless after two-hour radio outage

Paramedics were without two-way radios in the Barwon-South West region between 12.30pm and 2.30pm on Monday, November 13, 2023.

It also affected the Grampians and Gippsland regions - and comes two weeks after a similar outage across the northern half of the state, including Bendigo.

Secretary of the Victorian Ambulance Union Danny Hill said all five of Ambulance Victoria's country regions had now been affected.

"And yesterday's outage was over a much bigger area than the first," he said.

"The metro area switched to digital radio communications in the early 2000s - so doing this in regional areas is now well overdue."

Monday's outage took place during two major incidents in the Ballarat region: a large hazardous materials spill which blocked the Western Freeway at Wendouree from 1.30pm - as well as a series of spot fires which closed the Sunraysia Highway between Waubra and Lexton from 12.30pm.

"The state government said no one was seriously hurt during the blackout, but I don't buy that," Mr Hill said.

"It's like throwing a big rock into a crowd and then working out later that no one got hurt.

"It's still incredibly dangerous."

He said the analogue radio communications system had worked well in regional Victoria for decades - and while the source of Monday's blackout was unknown - he believed the ageing equipment was simply breaking down.

"These older systems are prone to failure," Mr Hill said.

"It's alarming that we've had widespread communication crashes that have affected dozens of ambulance stations in our area.

'There have been a number of tragedies on rural roads over the last few weeks - including what happened at Daylesford."

On Monday paramedics were relying on mobile phones to communicate - and Mr Hill said when mobile signal was not available, paramedics had to rely on someone to drive to the nearest mountain while crews got to work as best they could.

"Communications are very important - it's the first thing you do when you get to the scene - you triage," he said.

"You would normally radio back and ask for extra resources, air ambulances, get people to notify hospitals if there are a lot of casualties and talk about hazards at the scene.

"The other part of it is around occupational violence. If there's a risk, paramedics have to ask for police before entering the scene.

"All that is done with the radio."

Mr Hill said the metropolitan digital system was reliable - but the main factor preventing its statewide rollout was a network of costly repeater towers.

"You could put these digital radios in ambulances tomorrow - but they need the repeater towers," he said.

"They've had 15 to 20 years to do all of this."

The metropolitan digital radio system was set up before Rural Ambulance Victoria and the Metropolitan Ambulance Service merged in 2008.