Miner severs power and fiber optic cable, causing phone and internet outage

A fiber optic cable that was severed along with the power line at Swanberg Dredge on Tuesday, June 16 at noon, has since caused a widespread outage of phone and internet service for Fastwyre customers. The resulting power outage was restored soon after the incident, but repairing the fiber optic cable is taking longer.
As of Friday, Fastwyre technicians were on the ground in Nome, working on repairs.
The outage was caused when gold miner Kenny Hughes, who last week began gold mining operations east of Swanberg Dredge, drove heavy equipment underneath the powerlines and became entangled in the power and communication lines. “It got snagged by an excavator boom traversing the driveway below,” Hughes said via text to the Nome Nugget.
Ripping the lines off caused a power outage, which was fixed soon after the mishap on Wednesday.
Nome Joint Utilities General Manager John Handeland said the outage affected customers on city feeder #1 including southern Nome and customers on the Council Road, along the Beam Road and Kougarok Road to Banner Creek.  “City Feeder #1 faulted when two line phases came together causing a short circuit when mine equipment came in contact with utility infrastructure,” Handeland said. “The line crew responded, clearing fault and making repairs.”
He added that he was grateful that no injuries occurred.
The fiber optic cable is not buried and is attached to power poles. The cable is connected to the Quintillion fiber optic network, coming off the ocean just east of the Beam Road. Once it hits land, however, operation and maintenance is under the ownership of Fastwyre, formerliy TelAlaska, confirmed Quintillion President Mac McHale in a phone interview with the Nugget.
Fastwyre did not respond to a request for comment as of Friday evening and out-of-state tech support representatives reached by phone, but not authorized to speak to the media, did not know about the service outage.
The cut also causes that the National Weather Service reporting of Nome’s weather is not available online. The automated surface weather observation station need a functioning fiber optic connection to report. Although online current weather conditions are not available, flight traffic at the Nome airport was not interrupted, as pilots can call to obtain updated weather conditions.
The fiber optic line is as of Friday evening not repaired.