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BEAUFORT DELTA
Communication ties were cut on April 25 in the Beaufort Delta after a line from a helicopter severed a cable outside Inuvik.

A helicopter commissioned by NorthwesTel was making a routine fuel delivery to the company's Three-Mile Lake site, east of Inuvik, when it accidentally cut the cable, said Emily Younker, corporate communications manager for NorthwesTel.

The severed cable shut down cellphone service, data, long-distance calling from land-line phones, and Internet at about 2:30 p.m. The service disruption affected Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk, Tsiighetchic, Fort McPherson and Aklavik. Local telephone calls from land lines were not affected.

The fuel was successfully delivered through a system called long lining - where the load hangs below the helicopter and is lowered to the site. However, when the helicopter was raising itself away from the area, the long line clipped the power line.

"After the fuel was dropped at the site, the cable and net were still hanging and there was a hook that latched on to a line, which caused the fibre cut," said Younker.

NorthwesTel promptly arranged for a charter to dispatch technicians out of Whitehorse while a worker in Inuvik accessed the site by snowmobile and began the prep work for repairs.

"Technicians arrived (Wednesday) night and worked as long as the daylight allowed them and began work again (Thursday) morning," said Younker. "They did cable splicing to restore the cable."

Services were up and running as of at least 10:30 a.m. Bank machines, which also went down as a result of the outage, were restored at about the same time.

Kevin Murphy, manager of the Northern store in Tuktoyaktuk, said although debit machines were not operational, it didn't affect business.

"It was cash-only. We didn't have any major issues," he said.

The Inuvik airport, which is equipped with a backup power supply, was unaffected by the outage, said Karen King, director of the airport.

Fay Gordon, the Hamlet of Aklavik's secretary, said the hamlet's office stayed open Wednesday afternoon.

"It didn't really affect us. Maybe for the motor vehicles department, with people asking for registration. We couldn't do anything with that. We didn't have the Internet to put in their information. Those people would just have to come back today," she said.

Taig Connell, adult education instructor with Aurora College's Community Learning Centre in Fort McPherson, said losing the Internet for was actually productive for students who had no distractions to deter them from getting their work done.

"Students really got into their work and there was really no complaints. It was good. But they sure miss it," he said.

- with files from Laura Busch

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