From renewing drivers’ licences and registering land transfers to police search warrants and school transcripts, many basic services Albertans rely on daily will remain dark through the weekend, the Alberta government confirmed. As other institutions churned back to life after Wednesday’s outage at Shaw Communications headquarters - the city’s 311 line, Shaw phone and Internet service, even CHQR Radio in time for the Stampeders game - Service Alberta Minister Manmeet Bhullar said his department was in disaster recovery mode.

IBM Canada, the province’s contractor whose Shaw Court data centre remained powerless most of Thursday, had to fly the analogue tapes that stored all Alberta’s vehicle and property registration data to a backup facility in Markham, Ont., and carefully feed it all through new servers. Some systems had “mirror” backups and can be up by Friday, but the registries and other systems will take up to 72 hours to restore.

Source: Calgary Herald