They hit rainbow roots, that's gonna be expensive to fix

"Rainbow roots are another term for low-voltage wiring that provide internet or data. These are now damaged and you can’t splice these lines to fix them. You need to re-excavate the entire run and lay entirely new lines. This is an easy 7-figure mistake." @grok care to weigh in?

Not a forensic scientist or anything, but that was not hand digging.

😅

Always on a Friday too right around 3. 🤣

@Xisntfeespeech Every single time 🤣

A little duct tape will take care of that 😂

Duct tape definitely

Probably happens quite often Digging a long trench through the ground the machine accidentally severs an underground bundle of fiber optic cables, often called "rainbow roots"

That looks like about 50 wires that will need to be individually reconnected to the other side. Even an experienced electrician will probably take a full day to fix that.

On a Friday Afternoon as well.. The plumber replacing my sewer main chopped through 100 pairs of ATT data. Had 3 ATT trucks in my yard until 10:30 PM. ATT sent me a bill for $3500. Told them to fuck off and send the bill to the plumber that didn’t call dig alert. They Did!!

My adopted father retired from AT&T after 32 years. When fiber optics became a reality, he was responsible for a main trunk that went through Indianapolis. Some knucklehead union member snapped the main trunk. I drove him down at 2 AM to monitor the damage. Every hour that trunk was down almost $750,000 lost. That was back in 1994. Call before you dig.

Wago connectors, connect her up, fill the hole and say nothing 😜

Backhoe doesn't count as "hand digging" no matter how many times you say it.

Starlink 💫 to the rescue. No more rainbows, no more ditches, just pure internet.

rainbow roots as in gay plant?

I’m assuming they didn’t “call before you dig”.

I’m gonna be honest, I have no idea what I’m even looking at here.

Very expensive. I’ve spliced hundreds in my field of work…

First lie,”we were digging by hand” when the dirt clearly says mini excavator. Digging by hand with a shovel leaves non uniform vertical marks in the dirt, equipment/excavators leave uniform horizontal lines in the dirt from digging. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Fibre optic cable. These generally can’t be repaired and have to be relaid to the next junction boxes. We would always say that hitting one of those cables was a $1M expense.

The only roots that popped up in my head. Lol

Either: A. Nobody called 811. B. 811 contractor didn’t mark the line. or C. The line is within private property and your private locator is incompetent (or they didn’t call for one). Happens 500,000 times too often each year in the US. OSHA says locate ALL lines first, then dig!

When you're a teenager, it's a treasure.

Yeah, that's gonna cost a fortune to fix. They didn't do land survey first?

From the looks of it, those are copper wires. Most likely already abandoned for fiber optic. There is an entire network of copper that has been abandoned and replaced by fiber optics. No bill.

call before you dig

I used to work with fiber optic cable for cell phone tower housings below the tower. They were cables made of glass. If you accidentally bent one too far you’d have to replace the whole thing. Very fragile. Fiber transmits data using light pulses that travel through the cables. Can travel over 100 miles instantly without any degradation of internet speed. Always thought it was cool how we can use glass as cable 😆

That "hand dug" dirt sure does look like bucket marks and not pick and shovel marks

Ah, the dreaded fiber seeking backhoe strikes again.

Fortunately for them it's not fiber optic or it would cost a fortune.

This could also be a dead line is why I didn’t show up during 811 call. There’s probably $1 billion worth of old copper in the ground that’s not being used.