At around 4:00 am on Wednesday September 3rd a Telus fiber optic cable was cut in a northern region of Vancouver Island. The company reports this was an act of sabotage, and crews with specialized equipment had to be brought in to repair the damage. The cut primarily affected the cities of Port McNeill and Port Hardy stopping the function of home phones, mobile service, internet, payment processing and 911 landline services which were all down until mid afternoon. Telus reported that the total downtime was 10 hours and 14 minutes.
While the city of Port McNeil, host only a few thousands residents it is a significant industrial player in the region. It’s home to the largest sand and gravel quarry in the northern hemisphere, material is shipped via 70,000 tonne container ships to ports in California, Hawaii and 7000 tonne barges to Vancouver. Port Hardy is also seeing an expansion of its mineral and metal extraction, processing and exploration. All of these operations and the ports more broadly were presumably affected by the cutting of the fiber optic cables. Other Island communities, including Campbell River, Sayward, Woss and Tahsis, were also affected. Together these communities make up a substantial portion of British Columbia’s timber economy.
Telus said it’s working with police to investigate the “extensive damage” caused by vandals and ensure possible charges are pursued, yet no leads have been reported. Some people had received text messages from Telus saying there was vandalism in Sayward and to check the website for status updates, residents speaking to reporters explained that the advice to check the website wasn’t very practical. “If you can’t get on the website, how can you check the status?” It seems that a single snip troubled the operation of many of the industrial processes in the region and put quite the confusion into the air!
About Unsung
Unsung is a writing initiative which highlights self organized direct action across BC. State agencies and media have a practice of obscuring breaks with social peace except when they think it serves their interests. We believe that it is important for the rebel imagination to highlight the ever present practice of attack. Unsung highlights anonymous unclaimed actions we encounter in the media, police reports and stories we hear. We will explore some of the economic, ecological and political realities that shape the context that each action occurred in. It is important to remember that we do not know the intention of those carrying out actions and cannot speak on their behalf. Unsung is not an effort to explore actions taken exclusively by anarchists, but instead focuses on any that could spark the anti-authoritarian imagination. We are not publishing communiques or action claims, we believe regular entries to counter info sites are adequate for that effort.