
Last night was pretty crazy and heres why:
“We found out last night what it was like living without modern telecommunications. A fire at the Aliant substation on Allandale Road in St. John’s knocked out just about every communication device we have. Over 100,000 customers in the greater St. John’s area were affected - that included cell phones, land lines, bank machines, interac and long distance. The breakdown had varying effects on services across the island. Internet was down across the province.
All 9-1-1 emergency services rang busy during the outage. The St. John’s Regional Fire Department maintained communications and the Coast Guard set up satellite phones in addition to backup from Halifax.
Things went berserk just after 10:00 last night and didn’t return to normal until six hours later. Aliant’s Brenda Reid says the fire damaged their DC Power Supply system.
St. John’s resident Nick Eisnor says it’s “kind of scary'’ that a single cable fire could do so much damage to the island’s communication system. Aliant is investigating the incident.”
Source:VOCM