A word to the wise: Revelry is all fine and good, but if you’d like to keep your town on the Internet, shooting off a gun to celebrate the new year might not be such a good idea. Especially if you’re in the vicinity of a vital fiber-optic cable. “Whoops,” someone in Alaska is saying right now.

It’s a tradition in the community of Tanana to shoot off guns at midnight in the village, right where two rivers come together. But it’s all about location, location, location, reports the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner — this time, someone happened to point their gun straight at one of the main fiber-optic cable lines.

“You can’t fix stupid,” the owner of Yukon Telephone and Supervisions Cable TV said in summing up the incident. Tell us how you really feel?

He adds that it was likely a .410-gauge shotgun, as he picked up a bunch of empty shells for that type of gun near where the shooter or shooters were standing. Directly. Under. The cable line. It’s unclear whether or not someone was aiming for the box or just happened to hit it, however.

So far no one has fessed up and as such, the town has been without Internet this week while the company waits for parts to splice the line together. And that’ll take another two or three days to do once the parts arrive.

There’s no word on whether a city slicker doctor happened to be in the area and is now just waiting on those parts to restore Internet access and book a flight home, or if he’s going to fall in love with a local and take up ice-fishing. Because that’s what the movies tell me happens.

Internet, TV lost in Tanana as New Year’s revelers shoot out fiber optic cable [Fairbanks Daily News-Miner]

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