A Beaver Caused Canada’s Biggest Ever Internet Outage
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Chalk it up to bad luck or even bad timing, but sometimes the craziest things happen when least expected. That’s something that a few towns and an entire province in Canada have had to learn the hard way last week, as a fluke accident of nature had caused many homes to be in disarray. Much of this had to do with one lone beaver that somehow wound up creating the largest internet outage ever for the country. To top it all off, this doesn’t seem to be that remarkable of a situation for many people familiar with the wildlife of the area.
According to a report from The Byte, a news source that prides itself on highlighting the latest futuristic science and technology news, apparently a beaver had created headaches for much of northern British Columbia as it contended with a mass internet outage in the area. Per CTV News in Vancouver, one single beaver in Canada had many residents of northwestern British Columbia deprived of their internet and cell phone service for much of June 7, 2022. Landlines were also affected for what was reported to be about eight hours of lost service. As The Stack reports, the beaver by all accounts chewed a tree down so much that it eventually toppled onto a fiber optic cable line, causing the outage felt by much of the northern British Columbia area.
As preposterous and very Canadian as this story sounds, lots of residents of the province in Canada were not amused by this news. As stated by The Stack, an official on the ground in the area commented that, “I wouldn’t be a rich man if I had a nickel for every beaver outage, but they do happen.”
Tooth marks were seemingly found at the scene of the crime, which resulted in investigators assuming that the outage in Canada was the work of a beaver who must have chewed their way through. While sounding absurd, this is not the first time something like this has occurred. A whole other beaver was also to blame for a similar internet outage in April 2021, when close to 900 residents found themselves without service for most of a day in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. The internet service provider Telus spoke to CBC News when this first incident happened, and stated that it was a “bizarre and uniquely Canadian turn of events.”
Like most ongoing developments in areas around the world, Canada is no stranger to turning once desolate pieces of land into buildings and structures of the future. When messing with the groundwork of existing wildlife areas to install cables and power lines, animals of the region are bound to mix in with their surroundings. It may not happen everyday, but it’s perfectly understandable that a creature or rodent like a beaver could disrupt an entire town’s way of life just by doing what they know best: chew and gnaw their way to survival. Until a more permanent solution is put into place to work around some of these natural occurrences, it may not be surprising to read more about some of these unique commotions coming to light in the not so distant future.
