Highway 103 reopens, internet service disrupted in Halifax region after vehicle hits lines

Highway 103 in Halifax has reopenedafter it was closed for several hours Friday afternoontoaccommodate emergency repairs of some telecommunications lines that were damaged by a dump truck, leaving thousands without internet.

Exit 2B to Exit 3 was closed, but reopened around 4 p.m. local time, according to the Department of Public Works.

Jill Laing, a spokesperson with Eastlink, said in an email thetruck tore down several lines near the Bayers Lake business park, causing extensive damage to Eastlink's network. The lines neededto bereinstalled above the highway, she said.

Laing said the outage was affectingcustomers in the western part of Halifax and the St. Margarets Bay area.

At its peak, about 7,000 Eastlink customers were without service, but many cameback online as repairs weremade, she said.

Crews began working on the outageearly Friday morning.

"These are significant repairs that require co-ordinated effort with power and other partners and could take all day to complete, if not longer," the statement said.

In an update posted on X, Eastlink said it hopedto complete repairs by Friday night.

City Wide Communication was also affectedby the outage.Company president David Pothier said thousands of customers were without internet Friday.

He said mosthad their internet restoredafter their connections were rerouted through other service providers, but some people in Clayton Park, Bedford andon the South Shore remained affected.

Pothier said he was told the dump truck failed to lower its bucket when getting on the highway late Thursday evening, causing significant damage to lines overhead.

He said repairs were complicated by the fact that each telecommunications has a crew and the damage was spread across about10 lanes of traffic on Highway 103 and various off-ramps.

"That in itself is a major logistical nightmare. They've got to string cable back up across the highway and then they've gotto do what's called splicing, which is tobasically connect all ... the new cable with the old, and those are huge cables," said Pothier.

"So once they get that done, they've got a lot of work to do just tobasically get everything connected back up."

Pothier said City Wide Communications wasworking as hard as possibleto help customers. In an update at 6:30 p.m. AT on Facebook, the company said while some customers may see service returned as fibres are reconnected,full restoration wouldprobably take into the early morning on Saturday.

Purple Cow also acknowledged the outage on their website, saying that service hadbeen impacted around the province and crews wereworking to repair the issue. In an update at 6:05 p.m. AT, the company said its team wasstill at the site working on repairs.