Engineers at BC Hydro, the water and power company for the Canadian province of British Columbia, a beaver was identified as the culprit of a general connection failure in that Canadian province last week.
According to publishes CTVNewsthe fall of a poplar tree on June 7 cut off a power cable belonging to BC Hydro and a fiber optic cable belonging to the internet provider Telus, which much of northwestern British Columbiaa county of 5 million people, affecting the cities of Burns Lake, Granisle, Haida Gwaii, the Hazeltons, Kitimat, Prince George, Prince Rupert, Smithers, Terrace, Thornhill, Houston, Topley, Telkwa, Fraser Lake, and Vanderhoof.
BC Hydro staff concluded that the The fall from the tree was caused by a beaver because of the teeth marks it had at its base. That fall severed the two lines in a swampy area with difficult access, delaying the service’s reactivation and also sparking a fire controlled by local firefighters in Topley, the nearest town.
“It’s unusual, but it happens occasionally,” says Bob Gammer, a BC Hydro employee. So I wouldn’t be a rich man if I had a coin for every service outage caused by a beaver, but every now and then it does happen.”
Apart from the problem of internet access, the fall of the tree has complicated the entire city life ever since no payment system workedso businesses were forced to ask for cash payments, including one of the few gas stations in the area, but as customers complained, people no longer carry bills: everything is shifting to electronic payments.
The outage also affected cell phone service, which uses the fiber optic network for data connections to phones in the area.
This has been confirmed by the area’s infrastructure provider, CityWest installs a second fiber optic line to connect the area to Vancouver; so there are two connections for the zone and this prevents another beaver from causing a disturbance.
THE NATION
