Cause of SaskTel building fire ruled accidental

The fire completely destroyed the building, knocking out landline, cell phone, and Internet services. Relying heavily on phones and an Internet connection, Pelzer said the service disruption made the RCMP’s work more difficult.

“Everywhere in the area we still have cell service so the availability of 911 is there and we can still take calls from our centre in Regina so there’s no major issues to our response,” Pelzer said. “What we’ve seen so far, with the increased use of cellphones, we have intermittent cell phone outages so that’s somewhat concerning.”

If anything came up where immediate access to internet is required, officers can go to Loon Lake, Cold Lake or Meadow Lake as their systems aren’t affected.

Pierceland Deputy Mayor Richard Frey said it’s hard to update the public on what’s happening without social media. Throughout the weekend, updates were given through word-of-mouth.

“The SaskTel people have been on top of this, there’s a big crew down there so I would simply say to the residents, have some patience and let SaskTel do their thing,” Frey said.

Cellphone service was restored on Nov. 4 for area residents. Still without landline and Internet, SaskTel spokesperson Greg Jacobs said services should start being restored in the next three to four days. There’s still a tremendous amount of work to be done and it could be longer before everyone has service restored.

A new building is being assembled in Regina and when delivered crews will patch lines together but due to the amount of lines and having to completely rebuild, the project will take several days.

Colton Swiderski is meadowlakeNOW’s municipal affairs, crime and court, health and education reporter. He can be reached at cswiderski@jpbg.ca or tweet him @coltonswiderski.

by Colton Swiderski

Cause of SaskTel building fire ruled accidental

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