Monkey Causes Nationwide Blackout in Sri Lanka After Coming Into Contact with Grid Transformer

The Ceylon Electricity Board attributed the blackout to an “emergency” at a substation south of Colombo, the capital.

Meanwhile, local news outlets report that engineers have repeatedly warned successive governments for years about the urgent need to upgrade the power grid to prevent frequent blackouts.

An anonymous senior engineer was quoted in a Sri Lankan newspaper as saying: “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.”

The blackout began around 11 a.m. local time on Sunday, February 9, sparking criticism from residents over the state of the country’s infrastructure.

Mario Nawfal said on X: “A rogue monkey knocked out Sri Lanka’s entire power grid after triggering a total failure at a substation in Colombo.

“One monkey = total chaos. Time to rethink infrastructure?”

Authorities have cautioned residents to brace for further power cuts in the coming days, as the outage led to a breakdown at the Norochcholai coal power plant.