Monkey causes nationwide blackout in Sri Lanka
A monkey in Sri Lanka caused a major power outage on February 9, leaving the country without electricity for several hours.
The power went out in the morning when the animal touched part of an electricity substation in Panadura, a city near Colombo leading to a failure in the entire power grid.
Power Minister Kumara Jayakodi who confirmed the incident in a statement said that key places like the national hospital had power restored within an hour.
However, it took longer to bring electricity back to other areas amidst government caution that water supplies could also be affected.
This blackout comes at a time when Sri Lanka is already struggling with power shortages, local reports say.
On February 10 and 11, the country planned 90-minute power cuts due to a problem at a large coal power plant.
The 900-megawatt Norochcholai plant in the northwestern region broke down, making it harder for the country to generate enough electricity.
Sri Lanka has faced power crises before during its economic collapse in 2022 as a result of inadequate money to import fuel.
At one point, people had to live with 12-hour power cuts, leading to protests that forced then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.
India later stepped in with a $4 billion loan to help Sri Lanka recover.
Sunday’s outage is the first major blackout since 2022.
Officials from the Ceylon Electricity Board, which runs the country's power supply, apologised for the disruption but did not explain how a single monkey caused such a widespread failure. There was also no update on what happened to the monkey.
