Update 6: 2:58. The internet appears to be working again…
Uodate 5: They’ve changed the status to “late evening” rather than “afternoon”, so that’s a little less optimistic. Here’s hoping….
Update 4: Repairs are going better than expected; they now expect it to be done sometime this afternoon, rather than early evening. That’s good, right?
Update 3: They have now got an estimated time for having the problem fixed. The bad news? It won’t be until late tomorrow.
On April 24, at 4:36 in the morning, the internet went out in Tumbler Ridge.
According to Telus, the outage is caused by “cable damage”.
The damage has taken out both internet and cell service
At 9:30 am, a crew was dispatched to the site to assess the damage and begin “repair efforts.”
More information as it comes available. Of course, very few people in town will be able to see this status update until service is restored.
Update: 1:15. You can’t make this stuff up.
Here’s the note from Telus. Seriously. Blame Canada.
Just after 4 a.m. this morning, our fibre cable serving Tumbler Ridge was damaged which disrupted Internet, TV, and mobile service for some of our customers in the area. Our team immediately worked to identify the location of the damage and discovered that the cause of this fibre cut is fairly unique – beavers have chewed through our fibre cable at multiple points, causing extensive damage.
Our team located a nearby dam, and it appears the beavers dug underground alongside the creek to reach our cable, which is buried about three feet underground and protected by a 4.5 inch thick conduit. The beavers first chewed through the conduit before chewing through the cable in multiple locations.
Our crews are bringing in additional equipment and technicians to help expose the cable and determine how far the damage continues up the line, and will work around the clock to repair the cable and restore service as quickly as possible. The ground above our cable is partially frozen, and at this point in time, we do not have an estimated time of restoral as we are still working to assess the full scope of the damage. We have some overlapping wireless service in the community from other nearby cell towers, but cell phone service will be spotty or disrupted for many of our customers in the area. About 900 Internet customers and 60 TV customers are also affected by this disruption.
We know how critical connectivity is to our customers, and we are very sorry for this interruption. We will keep the community updated on our progress in restoring service throughout the weekend.
