Kenyans were shocked to find a monkey was the cause of a massive, nationwide blackout, which cut power to countless homes and businesses for three hours Tuesday.
A Vervet monkey climbed onto the roof of the Gitaru Power Station and tripped a transformer. This caused a chain reaction, tripping other transformers and machines and setting off a massive blackout.
“At 1129 hours this morning, a monkey climbed on the roof of Gitaru Power Station and dropped onto a transformer tripping it,” KenGen power said in a statement posted on Facebook featuring a picture of the monkey.
“This caused other machines at the power station to trip on overload resulting in a loss of more than 180MW from this plant which triggered a national power blackout,” the company stated. “The system has since been restored and all our power generating units are operating normally.”
The monkey survived the ordeal and has been handed over to Kenyan wildlife authorities, according to The New York Times. The whole incident only intensified criticism of KenGen’s highly vulnerable electric grid.
“KenGen power installations are secured by electric fencing which keeps away marauding wild animals,” the company said. “We regret this isolated incident and the company is looking at ways of further enhancing security at all our power plants.”
Apparently, high fencing wasn’t enough to keep one curious little monkey from shutting down Kenya’s economy for three hours.
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