Openreach Sees Horrific Cable Damage from Landslip in Kent UK
Cable breaks and damage happen all the time on UK broadband networks the size of Openreach’s, and they’re usually caused by accidents, such as third-party contractors ramming their diggers into the wrong patch of ground. But only very rarely do we see damage as bad as the one caused by a landslip in Kent this week.
In short, a “major incident” was declared after a cliff collapsed under a key road in the Kent village of Swanscombe yesterday, which caused significant damage to the warehouses below and ripped away a large area of the road surface in the vicinity – exposing all the utility pipes (e.g. water) and cables underneath (these have been left hanging precariously above a steep drop). Check out the video below.
According to Openreach, about 1,500 homes and businesses in the area have suffered connectivity problems with their broadband and phone services. Interestingly, the local Dartford MP, Gareth Johnson, said he met with Thames Water last September because the road had been dug up 47 times in four years, although it’s unclear whether this contributed to the problem as the road always looked somewhat precariously positioned.
Now, spare a thought for the poor engineers who will inevitably be tasked with trying to figure out how to fix this complex mess of a problem.
A spokesperson for Openreach said:
“Our engineers have been working hard to get customers back online and have diverted our phone and broadband network wherever possible, restoring service for hundreds of customers. But this is a complex repair job with both copper and fibre optic infrastructure involved, so it’s going to take us a few days to get it sorted out. We believe around 1,500 customers are still impacted.
We understand how frustrating this must be for anyone is affected and we thank anyone involved for their patience while we get things fixed. Anyone experiencing any disruption with their phone or broadband service should do their best to report it to their service provider who will then inform us.”
End.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Looks like it has history and an issue waiting to happen.
https://cdn.ca.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2023/04/A226-road-collapse-new.jpg
It does look like a cliff face that would be heavily exposed to weather related erosion. Plus, is that chalk I see?
Is it even a cliff?? To me it looks like a man-made embankment built specially to raise the road over the railway line, with vertical faces on both sides. Compare with the railway embankment on the right of that picture.
Probably it wasn’t a great design in retrospect 🙁
https://goo.gl/maps/gV5FF2nj4toJ2uvi8
Good view of it on the 3d google maps.
It certainly looks like an embankment.
There are a lot of those around with surprisingly steep and thin concrete sides.
This looks like it is cement mixed with chalky materials so it will have eroded quite badly with acid rain and then probably given way when a drain backed up. It doesn’t take much to blow something like this apart that is fundamentally not terrible stable!
Good candidate for a caption competition, with those 4 people stood there.
They might be able to reconnect the cables and fibre but the road is going to take much longer to sort out
A similar landslip took place near Wrexham in January 2021.
Work to fix it still hasn’t begun.
looking at google earth, looks like the chalk has been dug out either side, can’t see how its unexpected!
https://www.google.com/maps/place/A226/@51.4506877,0.3186988,101a,35y,255.73h,79.18t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x47d8b5d0e753deaf:0x82cafc47caa0e4e9!8m2!3d51.3965162!4d0.485729!16s%2Fm%2F03bxrf6
The decision to dig out a load of material and leave a sheer chalk edge is….an interesting one
Thank goodness that no one was hurt.
I believe that’s an old quarry site, the only bit of material that could not be extracted was below the road.
Well the good news is that they can come back and get it now
Either side of this road was excavated by the cement works which is now obsolete.
Councils have allowed Building companies to continuously erect houses all around the area WITHOUT doing anything to improve the infrastructure of the the road. Water leaks on that stretch of the road have been prominent for years! and especially on the 08th and 09th of April when it was like driving through a river, a fact I know because I had to drive through it. It appears now Thames Water want to blame cliff erosion for the cause of the water leak!!!
I wonder if that vegetation is actually helping to destabilise the chalk cliffs below? On a hillside trees generally help stop the soil being eroded away by wind and rain, but on a chalk cliff it might cause it crack underneath
I’ve done a bit of research, the bedrock is “Bedrock geology
Lewes Nodular Chalk Formation, Seaford Chalk Formation and Newhaven Chalk Formation – Chalk. Sedimentary bedrock formed between 93.9 and 72.1 million years ago during the Cretaceous period” Source BGS Geology, I suspect that as chalk is porous then this collapse is due to freeze-thaw weakening.
It’s going to take at least two years to re-open this precipitous road.
It was Thames Water’s leaking water mains that caused the collapse, by saturating the chalk, from under the road surface.
I wonder if Thames Water’s insurers will pay up, if they go bust, or if the poor old tax-payer will have to foot the bill to fix these corporate jokers’ mess?