‘Total chaos’: Monkey blamed for nationwide power cut in Sri Lanka Energy minister says monkey ‘came into contact with grid transformer’, causing hours-long outage in sweltering heat.
A countrywide power outage in Sri Lanka has been blamed on a monkey that clambered into a power station south of Colombo.
On social media, Sri Lankans likened the incident to a slapstick comedy, while others highlighted the fragility of Sri Lanka’s power grid.
“The national power grid is in such a weakened state that frequent island-wide power outages may be expected if there is a disturbance in one of our lines,” an unnamed senior engineer was quoted as saying by the Daily Mirror.
“A monkey came into contact with our grid transformer, causing an imbalance in the power system,” the energy minister, Kumara Jayakody, told reporters.
