People living in at least four Edmonton neighbourhoods found themselves disconnected over the weekend. “At first I thought that I needed to reset the modem,” said Gabrielle Brandt. Brandt, who works from home, soon realized she wasn’t the only one without internet service. “Thieves intentionally cut some of our fibre lines in an attempt to steal copper causing significant damage,” a Rogers spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday. The vandalism interrupted internet, TV and home phone services for thousands of Rogers customers in Wîhkwêntôwin, Glenora, Westmount and Prince Charles. “I feel like it’s getting worse,” said Brandt. In August she started noticing street lights around her neighbourhood were out. “It started with a couple lights and then our whole street was out for a couple months and now that it’s been fixed, other lights towards the school have been damaged, and then the wifi, so it definitely feels like it’s escalating,” she said. According to the city, street light outages because of vandalism and wire theft are on the rise. “The city understands how important street lights are to the safety and well-being of our communities and are committed to ensuring lighting is restored as quickly as possible,” said Chelsea Keelan, the technical and regulatory services director for the city’s Parks and Roads Services. Communities affected include Westmount, Bellevue, Grovenor, and Chinatown. “It’s incredibly frustrating to be having this wire theft impacting our city streets,” said councillor Anne Stevenson, who not only hears about the impacts but is living with them. “My own street currently has no street lighting,” she said. City staff are working with electrical services contractors with the goal of completing repairs within about 17 business days. “Due to the severity of the damage caused by wire theft, more time may be required than is typical for outages, as it involves significant infrastructure replacement,” Keelan said. Rogers said outages caused by vandalism can take three to four times longer to repair . “Like other providers, we’re seeing a troubling rise in vandalism and attempted theft to our network infrastructure across the country,” a spokesperson said. The company said the total number of outage hours related to vandalism has gone up by more than 400 per cent since 2022. “It’s prominent almost everywhere right now and really troubling,” said Edmonton’s Mayor Andrew Knack. He said the issue is something that needs to be dealt with at the provincial level, similar to changes made a few years ago to combat catalytic converter thefts. “You don’t hear about it in the same way you did a few years ago, maybe it’s time to look at that same type of approach for copper wire and that type of situation we’re dealing with now,” Knack said. “The city can respond, we will continue to work on those repairs and get them completed as quickly as possible, but we really do need some upstream solutions here,” said Stevenson. She also referenced changes made to provincial regulations around scrap metal recycling, such as expanding reporting and information requirements for scrap metal transactions and introducing a ticketing process to make it easier for police to address violations. “The question I have now is how are they enforcing that, what sort of reporting do we have to ensure those regulations are being adhered to and what more might we need to do,” Stevenson said. But the province tells CTV News Edmonton it’s not considering any changes. “Alberta has seen an increase in reported scrap metal thefts over the past five years, highlighting the importance of strong local enforcement,” said Arthur Green, the press secretary for Alberta’s Public Safety and Emergency Services Minister. “Municipalities, as the primary jurisdictions responsible for enforcing the legislation, play a key role in preventing the theft and sale of stolen metals through police and peace officers,” Green added. While Edmonton’s Mayor hopes police can tackle the issue, he said there are challenges. “I mean you’re not going to be able to be on every street corner,” said Knack. “I think it’s a bit about monitoring where it’s happening, seeing if there’s a trend and then police can try to make sure they’re patrolling in the right spaces,” he added. The city said it’s also now using preventative measures including locks in locations where thefts are happening and installing aluminum wire instead of copper to help reduce damage and outages in the future. With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Miriam Valdes-Carletti and Hannah Kavanagh
