I imagine the engineer will be held liable, not the state official.
Why would you leave a voicemail and not follow up with an email? Why would you leave a voicemail and not continue to contact other members of the team? The engineer did the bare minimum in terms of communication.
He probably did enough to protect his azz
His job is to report it, it’s the next banana in charge to handle his report. That’s the person whose about to get it real good