Monkey causes nationwide blackout in Sri Lanka

• Published On: 10 February 2025 at 19:55

Sri Lanka suffered a nationwide blackout after a monkey tampered with a power station south of Colombo.

Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody confirmed that the animal made contact with a grid transformer, disrupting the system and causing widespread outages.

The blackout began at 11:00 local time (05:30 GMT) on Sunday, plunging Sri Lanka into darkness and forcing many people to rely on backup generators.

Authorities prioritised power restoration for critical services such as medical facilities and water purification plants, but they warned that complete restoration could take several hours.

The incident sparked a mix of criticism and humour on social media. Mario Nawfal, a user on X (formerly Twitter), commented, "A rogue monkey knocked out Sri Lanka's entire power grid after causing a total failure at a substation in Colombo. One monkey equals complete chaos. Is it time to rethink infrastructure?

Another user, Sreeni R, posted an illustration of Hanuman, the Hindu deity depicted as a monkey, joking that Sri Lanka had "tasted monkey business" before.

Jamila Husain, editor-in-chief of the Daily Mirror, made the following statement: "Only in Sri Lanka can a group of monkeys fighting inside a power station cause an islandwide power outage."

Local engineers have repeatedly expressed concern about the vulnerability of Sri Lanka's national power grid.

On Monday, the Daily Mirror quoted a senior engineer as saying that "frequent islandwide power outages may be expected if there is even a disturbance in one of our lines."

The blackout brings back memories of widespread power outages that occurred during Sri Lanka's 2022 economic crisis, further exposing the country's fragile infrastructure.