Communication providers can prepare for a lot of contingencies towards infrastructure issues, but when it comes to the work habits of one of Canada's iconic wildlife species, all must bow, even phone and Internet companies, to the power of the Beaver.
The official ruling on this week's massive communication outage across the northwest has been attributed to a busy beaver, with BC Hydro providing the background to the Tuesday event.
Hydro notes that one of the large rodents chewed up a tree, which then in a Lemony Snicket kind of way fell, going on to damage a number of telephone poles and fibre cables hear Houston.
The outage affected residents from Prince George to Prince Rupert and beyond, wherever internet and phone connectivity is found.
Perhaps the incident was in response to something the Beaver had found on the Internet?
While the communication infrastructure backbone of the northwest was damaged, the Beaver in true Canadian tradition was off to other adventures following his work.
Of note, it's the second time that a Beaver has wreaked havoc on communication in the north this year, a fellow member of the Beaver's union did much the same in Tumbler Ridge in April.
The CBC has perhaps the most helpful description of Tuesday's incident here.
The story is quickly becoming the thing of legend and we will update news accounts of the final chomp that brought down the Internet below.
Check back often to review some of the more fascinating of takes on the situation.
June 10 -- Blame it on the Beaver, Says BC Hydro after Northwest Internet and Phone outage
June 10 -- The Day everything stopped working
June 9 -- Damaged cable that took down northwest BC phone and Internet underscores vulnerability of region
How Prince Rupert based CityWest addressed the service interruption on Tuesday can be found as part of Communication archive page.
Don't forget about the sharks that chew on undersea fibre cables
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