The South Australian government will consider legal action against the developer of a smartphone app designed to send emergency warnings after users could not access alerts during catastrophic bushfire conditions.
Premier Jay Weatherill says Ripe Intelligence, the developer of Alert SA, was selected for its track record in the sector, but the company has not delivered the service promised.
"They've manifestly failed us here and so we'll be pursuing our rights against them," the premier said on Monday.
He called the failure "disgraceful" and admitted the situation was an embarrassment for the government.
Ripe Intelligence was contracted to provide 99.9% reliability, but the app crashed on Saturday as a serious bushfire raged in the state's southeast and as other fires were also burning.
Alert SA also went down for several hours in October.
Emergency Services Minister Chris Picton said on Sunday the government would dump the app after the company could not provide the necessary assurances that such a failure would not happen again.
The contract is worth $AU284,000 a year and will expire in June.
South Australians are now being urged to turn to other sources for emergency information including the Country Fire Service website, emergency social media pages, the Bushfire Information Hotline and ABC radio alerts.
