A power and internet outage in British Columbia, Canada was caused by a particularly industrious beaver.
Officials have now identified a beaver as the cause of a June 7 outage which left many residents of northwestern B.C. without internet, landline and cellular service for more than eight hours.
The beaver gnawed its way through an aspen tree which then fell on both BC Hydro lines and a Telus fibre-optic cable line strung along BC Hydro poles between Topley and Houston.
The resulting power outage affected just 21 customers but the fibre optics damage affected Telus customers in Burns Lake, Granisle, Haida Gwaii, the Hazeltons, Kitimat, Prince George, Prince Rupert, Smithers, Terrace, Thornhill, Houston, Topley, Telkwa, Fraser Lake and Vanderhoof.
CityWest, the utilities company owned by the City of Prince Rupert, also had its customers affected because it uses the Telus fibre optics line.
BC Hydro official Bob Gammer said crews identified a beaver as the culprit because of chew marks at the bottom of the downed tree.
The lines are located in a swampy area and with the high water levels, there was some difficluty accessing the site, he added.
“It's unusual, but it does happen every once in a while,” Gammer said. “So I wouldn't be a rich man if I had a nickel for every beaver outage, but they do happen.”
I guess it's a Canada thing.
In the US, infrastructure damage of this sort is caused by right-wing terrorists and corporate neglect.
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