Around 5,000 Calgarians affected by 2nd copper wire theft in May

Around 5,000 people were affected by a Shaw outage in northwest Calgary on Tuesday, the second outage in May.

According to an email from a Rogers Communications spokesperson, the outage was caused by a fibre cut “caused by vandalism” and “suspected theft of copper wire.”

The outage affected the neighbourhoods of Balmoral, Brentwood, Bridgeland, Capitol Hill, Charleswood, Collingwood, Crescent Heights, Hillhurst, Mayfair, Mountview, Mount Pleasant, National, North Haven, Renfrew, Rosemont, Sunnyside and Tuxedo Park.

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The outage was resolved at around 4:50 p.m., according to Shaw’s website.

The spokesperson said vandalism-related outages are increasing year over year “at a rapid pace,” and outages have increased by four to five times since 2022.

This was the second outage in Calgary this month. The last Shaw outage happened on May 6 and affected the Mount Pleasant, Tuxedo Park and Crescent Heights neighbourhoods, as well as other parts of north Calgary.

Around 15,000 customers were impacted by the outage earlier this month.