A network element failure detector provides a fallback mechanism when external resources fail to load. For example, a “contingency” tag allows a consumer to load local resources when third party resources specified by a webpage developed by a service provider fail to load. Thus, the webpage developer can specify the functionality of a webpage when the referenced third party external resource fails to load. The consumer can also alert the service provider and/or the third party of the failure to load the referenced third party external resource.