As the business day began this morning in Whitehorse, most stores were operating on a cash-only basis, but some weren't operating at all.

As of 9:30 a.m., Walmart's doors were closed but management wasn't available to say why.

Next door, Canadian Tire customers were free to shop as long as they paid for their purchases in cash.

Credit was available up to a certain limit, but debit card transactions weren't working at all.

"Other than that, we have all our computer systems up and we're good to go,” said Janice Dewar, Canadian Tire's retail standards manager.

The store had already had Internet service restored and was receiving emails before 10 a.m. The phone lines were still down, though.

Parents across the city found themselves coming up with alternative plans to keep in touch with caregivers as they also waited for phone lines to begin working again.

Some daycares posted signs at their entrances explaining the process should they need to get in touch.

That often meant making sure workers knew where parents would physically be through the day so staff could come to them in the event of an emergency.

Once cell phones were back up, some daycares provided an alternative number.

At Bubble's Daycare downtown, parents were filling out forms to let the daycare know where they would be.

"If something happens, someone (may) have go to their (the parents') workplace,” supervisor Joy Agus said this morning.

As parents dropped their kids off through the morning, she made sure they knew phones weren't working and had them fill out a form detailing where the daycare could find them through the day.

Most of the parents of the 26 kids at the daycare have cell phones, Agus said, noting she was double-checking to ensure the daycare had those numbers for emergencies.

Cell phones were the first lines of communication to be back in service this morning.

Things were running fairly smoothly at Whitehorse General Hospital, said Val Pike, the hospital's communication officer.

By 11:30 a.m., everything was back up and running at the hospital, but "things were always under control,” Pike said.

"The message we were getting out to the public via CBC was that things were operational the entire time,” she said.

"There were, I think, a few delays for people coming in for blood work, the message was out that if you had blood work planned for this morning, hold off for a few hours, but every thing's up and running now.”

The unexpected experience provided "a good test of all our systems,” Pike added.

"We've got a few things we need to work out ... sometimes, I think we get so dependent on Internet and cell phone use, and the fact that the whole community was feeling this challenge, it's a bit of a wake-up call.

"One of the things we noticed is, we do have satellite phones, but are we on the best system we can possibly get? That kind of thing, they worked, but you know it's things like that that are always a good test of the system.”

School bus service ran as usual, and schools were kept open.

At the Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport, all three airlines had flights take off this morning, if a bit behind schedule.

Rich Olson, Westjet's station manager, said the communications outage had only a minimal effect on the airline.

"We didn't have any communication at all with our central in Calgary; everything's been down at the airport here, but we had our sat links up in the aircraft so they were able to speak from the aircraft itself to our central in Calgary, so sat phones and sat link were our only form of communication,” he said.

Westjet's flight was delayed 40 minutes after having to transition to manual check-in and boarding procedures.

Passengers on Wednesday night's incoming Air Canada flight were treated to the unusual spectacle of seing the city beneath them suddenly lose most of its lights.

While Scotia Bank, TD Canada Trust and CIBC were open and serving customers, RBC and the Bank of Montreal were closed.

Doug Janzen, Scotia's branch manager, said the Internet was up and running at his bank by 8:15 a.m. when he started his day, and he saw people taking cash out of the machines.

"The only thing I had to do was reboot my computer, and I have to do that on a Monday anyway so it's not really much of an inconvenience at all,” he said.

"I'm guessing that earlier in the morning that our bank machines likely weren't working ... but between four and eight, if we have more than two or three transactions during that time frame, it would be a lot.”

The phones lines were up and running at the bank just after 10 a.m.

While Janzen imagines it may have been an inconvenience for some of Scotia's customers, he joked it was "kind of nice” for him.

In the event the bank's Internet capability had been down, they would have had to transition to manual procedures.

"We have procedures in place that allow people to access certain amounts, or if we know them for a fact, we do have procedures in place. The bank machines would be down. We'd basically have to resort to a manual procedure, which is a lot slower,” Janzen said.

"We've lost Internet before and we haven't closed our doors for any great length of time.”

The local amateur radio members stepped in and provided some backup emergency communications between points in town. The Yukon Amateur Radio Association (YARA) has a network of radio repeaters which cover much of the territory, and could have stepped in during a prolonged communications outage.

Ron McFadyen, former public broadcaster, and former president of YARA, arrived at the CBC broadcast building this morning to provide a link to incoming information from the rest of the members.

Some YARA members were also posted at the Emergency Measures Organization and Firehall #2 (the Public Safety Building) at the top of the Two Mile Hill.

Another member who was heading to Inuvik during his job as a transport driver, was in contact on the highway. His services weren't required as YARA's involvement was geared back before he arrived in Carmacks due to the phone network being brought back to service.

– With files from Stephanie Waddell.