Internet service disrupted, Highway 103 closed in Halifax region after vehicle hits lines

Part of Highway 103 in Halifax is closed Friday afternoon to accommodate emergency repairs of some telecommunications lines that were damaged by a dump truck, leaving thousands without internet.

The Department of Public Works said the highway from Exit 2B to Exit 3 is closed. Repairs are expected to be completed by late afternoon.

Jill Laing, a spokesperson with Eastlink, said in an email the truck tore down several lines near the the Bayers Lake business park, causing extensive damage to Eastlink’s network. The lines must be reinstalled above the highway, she said.

Laing said the outage is 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 are coming back online as repairs are made, she said.

Crews have been working on the outage since early this morning.

“These are significant repairs that require co-ordinated effort with power and other partners and could take all day to complete, if not longer,” the statement said.

City Wide Communication is also affected by the outage. Company president David Pothier said thousands of customers were without internet Friday.

He said most have 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 are still affected.

Pothier said he was told 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 are underway near Highway 103 Friday afternoon. (David Laughlin/CBC)

He said while repairs are underway, they’re complicated by the fact that each telecommunications has a crew and the damage is spread across about 10 lanes of traffic on Highway 103 and various off ramps.

“That in itself is a major logistical nightmare. They’ve got to string cable back up across the highway and then they’ve got to do what’s called splicing, which is to basically connect all those the new cable with the old, and those are huge cables.”

“So once they get that done, they’ve got a lot of work to do just to basically get everything connected back up.”

Pothier said City Wide Communications is working as hard as it can to help customers.

Purple Cow also acknowledged the outage on their website, saying that service has been impacted around the province and crews are working to repair the issue.

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