Engineers from BC Hydro, the water and electricity utility for the Canadian province of British Columbia, they identified a beaver as the culprit for a general connectivity outage in this Canadian province last week.

According publishes CTVNewsthe fall of a poplar tree on June 7 cut a power line from BC Hydro and a fiber optic cable from Internet provider Telus, which knocked out much of northwestern British Columbiaa province of 5 million people, touching the towns of Burns Lake, Granisle, Haida Gwaii, the Hazeltons, Kitimat, Prince George, Prince Rupert, Smithers, Terrace, Thornhill, Houston, Topley, Telkwa, Fraser Lake and Vanderhoof.

BC Hydro staff concluded that the The fall of the tree was caused by a beaver due to the teeth marks it had on its base. This fall cut the two lines in a marshy area of ​​difficult access, which delayed the reactivation of the service, and also caused a fire, controlled by the local firefighters of Topley, the nearest town.

“It’s unusual, but it happens once in a while,” said BC Hydro employee Bob Gammer. So I wouldn’t be a rich man if I had a penny for every beaver breakdown, but once in a while it happens.”

Beyond the problem of internet access, the fall of the tree has complicated all urban life, since no payment system workedfor which businesses have been forced to ask for cash payments, including one of the few service stations in the area, but as customers have complained, people no longer have bills on them: everything is turned towards the electronic payments.

The outage also affected mobile phone service, which uses the fiber optic network for data connections from phones in the area.

The region’s infrastructure provider, CityWest, has confirmed that installs a second fiber optic line connect the region to Vancouver; thus, there will be two connections for the area and this will prevent another beaver from causing a service outage.