Highway 103 in Halifax has reopened after it was closed for several hours on Friday afternoon to accommodate emergency repairs of some telecommunications lines that were damaged by a dump truck, leaving thousands without internet. Exit 2B to Exit 3 was closed but reopened around 4 p.m. local time, according to the Department of Public Works.
Jill Laing, a spokesperson with Eastlink, said in an email that the truck tore down several lines near the Bayers Lake business park, causing extensive damage to Eastlink’s network. The lines needed to be reinstalled above the highway. Laing mentioned that the outage was affecting customers in the western part of Halifax and the St. Margarets Bay area. At its peak, about 7,000 Eastlink customers were without service, but many came back online as repairs were made.
Crews began working on the outage early Friday morning. According to a statement, these were significant repairs that required a coordinated effort with power and other partners and could take all day to complete, if not longer. Eastlink hoped to complete repairs by Friday night.
City Wide Communication was also affected by the outage. Company president David Pothier said thousands of customers were without internet on Friday. Most had their internet restored after their connections were rerouted through other service providers, but some people in Clayton Park, Bedford, and on the South Shore remained affected. Pothier explained that the dump truck failed to lower its bucket when getting on the highway late Thursday evening, causing significant damage to lines overhead.
Repairs to telecommunications lines were underway near Highway 103 on Friday afternoon. Pothier mentioned that repairs were complicated by the fact that each telecommunications company has a crew, and the damage was spread across about 10 lanes of traffic on Highway 103 and various off-ramps. He emphasized the logistical nightmare of stringing cable back up across the highway and the splicing needed to connect the new cable with the old.
City Wide Communications was working hard to help customers. In an update at 6:30 p.m. AT on Facebook, the company stated that while some customers may see service returned as fibers are reconnected, full restoration would probably take into the early morning on Saturday. Purple Cow also acknowledged the outage on their website, mentioning that service had been impacted around the province, and crews were working to repair the issue. In an update at 6:05 p.m. AT, the company stated that its team was still at the site working on repairs.
