In the morning of Monday, October 25, 2010 Argo Road Maintenance were digging along the base of the slide area just outside of Coalmont to make a place for the ineveitable rocks to land instead of as many ending up on the Coalmont Road. Unfortunately, somebody at Argo forgot to “Call Before You Dig” ! When we came home from Keremeos at 11:30 AM we noticed a Telus truck stopped right at the new “No Jake Brake” sign entering Coalmont from Princeton, and two men working on a rat’s nest of cables sticking up out of the ditch. Telephone service was out until sometime in the afternoon.

After having problems with our phone service later in the evening, I emailed Telus and spent 46 minutes waiting for their “instant chat” repair service. We were assured that there was no reported service outage in Coalmont and if we were experiencing problems it must be our line. If they couldn’t repair the problem at their end, Telus would make a repair call on – get this – November 9th!

This morning, I went over and took a photo of the area. It is clear that the phone problem was not caused by our line. You can see the exposed phone cable, lying in the new ditch that Argo have dug – and there are two brand new splices.

One wonders, since Telus are not (officially) aware of the problem, if the cables will be left uncovered to be damaged as rocks continue to rain down from above. It also brings “to light” a bigger question. Should our phone line – our only way of reaching 911 Emergency Services – be buried in a shallow trench at the base of an unstable slope? In addition, is two weeks an acceptable time frame for a repair service in an area that relies on Telus for 911 service? ~ Bob Sterne

Photo Bob Sterne