An email bounces, a boy dies.

This happened around 15 years ago. Clint (the somewhat reclusive author of this post - AKA schizo at Debian.org) and I were working for a web host / ISP, Icom CMT (which was bought by Qwest).

Juan, another employee, was at home approaching a diabetic coma, and, as far as we know, couldn't reach a phone (or perhaps it didn't occur to him to do so?) - instead he tried to email the NOC, which would have alerted one of us pretty quickly.