HAY RIVER - The South Slave was temporarily incommunicado early last week.

Hay River, Fort Smith, Enterprise, Kakisa and Fort Resolution, along with Fort Fitzgerald, Alta., lost long-distance telephone service and Internet access for seven hours on Jan. 26.

Kelly O'Connor, the manager of Hay River Airport, holds a satellite phone, one of the ways the airport kept in touch with the outside world during a communications outage in the South Slave on Jan. 26. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

The outage occurred when an underground fibre optic cable between Yellowknife and the South Slave was accidentally severed.

"They were essentially cut off from the outside world as far as communications go," said Anne Kennedy, director of corporate communications with NorthwesTel.

The cable was cut about two kilometres west of the junction of Highways 1 and 3, near Fort Providence.

As of late last week, Kennedy said the matter was still under investigation and she did not want to speculate on what exactly happened, other than to say the break was not caused by a NorthwesTel crew. "It was someone doing some kind of work at the edge of the highway."

Local telephone service was not affected within communities.

The outage affected people in the South Slave in a multitude of ways.

No calls could get through to the RCMP's dispatch centre in Yellowknife, so detachments answered after-hours calls themselves.

Dana Rasiah, the chief executive officer with the Fort Smith Health and Social Services Authority, said the organization had a satellite phone if an emergency call had to be made to Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife or to an Edmonton hospital.

"We didn't have to use it," Rasiah added.

One scheduled flight from Yellowknife to Hay River was cancelled because of the communication outage, but two others made it as usual. First Air was unable to gather accurate information of weather conditions in Hay River and made the decision to cancel the flight.

Kelly O'Connor, the airport manager, said the airport used a satellite phone and messages were also relayed by radio to air traffic control in Edmonton through planes flying overhead.

"It worked out," O'Connor said, adding it was encouraging to see the airport could cope with such a situation.

It was also temporarily back to the cash economy for the region's businesses, as debit and credit card transactions were not possible.

Stan Hunter, the owner/operator of Stan's Quick Stop in Fort Resolution, said he put up a sign advising customers that no debit service or credit was available.

"If they didn't have cash, they just went home again," he said, noting only a few cashless people walked away and returned when communications were restored.

In addition, thousands of long-distance calls could not be made or received in the South Slave, plus thousands of e-mails.

Aside from inconvenience, Kennedy is not aware of any serious consequences from the outage.

NorthwesTel learned of the problem by an alarm at its surveillance centre at about 1 p.m. on Monday.

Technicians were in the general area and located the exact site in an hour and a half.

Kennedy said, once it was determined what had happened, technicians and specialized equipment for fibre optic repair were dispatched from Hay River and Yellowknife, arriving at about 6:30 p.m.

Temporary splicing was completed at 7:53 p.m. and service restored, Kennedy noted.

Permanent repairs were made in the daylight hours of Jan. 27, she added. "Everything's fine now."

Kennedy said such accidental cuts usually happen during the construction season in the spring and summer. "This one was unusual in that it happened in the winter."

The area affected was also unusually large. Normally, the outages occur in neighbourhoods and affect maybe a couple of hundred homes.