2025 Sri Lanka blackouts

The 2025 Sri Lankan blackouts were a series of nationwide electrical blackouts which occurred in Sri Lanka on 9 February 2025. Blackouts began at around 11.30 am SLST (UTC+5:30) and lasted for over five to six hours. The nationwide blackouts were attributed to a massive disruption caused by a monkey which had apparently intervened to trigger an irreparable damage which made it unable to restore the electricity in most parts of Sri Lanka immediately after the incident had unfolded.
Development
The Ministry of Power and Energy issued a statement clarifying that an island-wide blackout had occurred after a monkey had broken into a sub-station in Sri Lanka's electrical grid. The Ceylon Electricity Board in a press statement claimed that the incident took place in Panadura substation. "A monkey has come in contact with our grid transformer, causing an imbalance in the system," as quoted by the Minister of Power and Energy Kumara Jayakody in a press conference with the reporters. According to a documentary evidence from daily newspaper , it was understood that the power was fully restored across various parts of the country by about 6pm. The outage apparently caused three generators at the Lakvijaya Power Station in Norochcholai to become inoperative.
However, in an unremarkable turn of events, the Sri Lankan monkey became a trending topic and sparked massive global media attention after being named as the main culprit behind the cause of a massive nationwide blackouts in Sri Lanka on a single day which had ultimately affected the livelihoods of many Sri Lankans. The incident was deemed as bizarre considering the circumstances behind the incident as the authorities initially speculated that the outage would have been erupted due to the possibility of technical failures. However, there was no real clarity on how one monkey was enough to trigger massive widespread repercussions and ripple effects in terms of a major power outage in across all the parts of the country.
On 10 February 2025, Ceylon Electricity Board announced that power cuts would be imposed on a 90-minute schedule across various parts of Sri Lanka on a selected basis on 10th and 11th February 2025 as a precautionary and proactive measure to combat derailments after the monkey induced power outage saga and also to manage electricity demand across four important zones.
Reactions
Ever since monkey had been named as the prime factor for inducing a sudden nationwide power cut in Sri Lanka, Sri Lankans jumped into the bandwagon by suggesting that it would be a slapstick comedy to portray a creature like monkey for the power failure. Social media erupted with memes being circulated about how one monkey was adequate to frustrate the 22 million Sri Lankans on a single day by spearheading the electricity crisis. Some users pointed out about the complacency and fragile nature of Sri Lanka’s power grid and social media was flooded with trending posts including “One monkey = total chaos". Some even highlighted that it is such a rare occurrence that an animal is blamed entirely by the authorities for a nation's massive power failure and malfunction.

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