The entirety of Sri Lanka is facing a power outage– all because of one monkey

The entirety of Sri Lanka on Sunday (February 9) suffered a power outage due to a rather bizarre reason.

It wasn’t the energy crisis of the country that caused the issue, as one might expect. Instead, it was an unsuspecting monkey! The primate intruded in a Sri Lankan electrical grid sub-station and ended up causing an island-wide blackout, from around 11:30 am (0600 GMT).

A little over three hours later, power had not still not been fully restored.

Monkeying around

Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody said, “A monkey has come in contact with our grid transformer causing an imbalance in the system.” He informed that the intrusion had taken place in a suburb of south Colombo.

“Engineers are attending to it to try and restore the service as soon as possible,” the minister said.

While power was restored in some areas, it was not immediately clear how much longer the outage would last.

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The Ceylon Electricity Board’s website put up an urgent notice that read “We are making every effort to restore the island-wide power failure as soon as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.” The CEB did not reveal the cause of the power cut in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan public reacts

Soon after the blackout, several citizens took to Reddit to find out what was happening. “Is there an all island electricity failure going on?” one user posted on the r/SriLanka subreddit.

Netizens were then able to quickly confirm that the entirety of Colombo, Galle, and several other regions had no power at all.

Many complained about multiple hours long power cuts during the high heat. The temperature in most urban centres in the island nation is north of 30°C.

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In some places, like Ratnapura, the high humidity has led to the temperature actually feeling as high as 36°C, according to Accuweather.

Others lamented about how frequently the country experiences power cuts– especially on the weekends.

Following the power outage, some netizens also highlighted related issues such as drop in internet connectivity– likely due to towers not getting electricity supply– and lack of water– perhaps due to stopping of electric pumps or motors.

With inputs from AFP