>A municipal snowplow knocked
out Telus service to roughly 150 homes on the Blackcomb Benchlands this
weekend, leaving residents without phone or internet for more than two days.
“It’s put everyone’s safety
at risk,” said Susie Goodall, one of the homeowners affected by the outage.
There has been no 911 service
in the area since Sunday, she said.
“It shouldn’t have been left
until Tuesday to be sorted out,” Goodall added.
The accident happened at 1
p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 13.
Telus spokesperson Shawn Hall
said crews were on site that afternoon and have been working long hours to get
the service back up and running.
“We’ve had crews working
awfully long hours to get this repaired,” he said. “It’s a complex job.”
Municipal spokesperson Diana
Waltmann said the front-end loader was pushing back banks of snow when it hit
the Telus box, which was covered by snow at the time.
“We can’t do anything about
it,” said Waltmann. “Telus has to fix it.”
Goodall said she hopes the
municipality learns from the mistake and takes some responsibility for it.
“My main concern is safety,”
she said. “There has to be some future responsibility.”
Telus restored the service by
Tuesday at 3:30 p.m.