The entire country of Kenya was left without electricity for 15 minutes on Tuesday after a monkey somehow slipped into a power station, triggering a widespread blackout.
Officials with the Kenya Electricity Generating Company told Kenya’s The Nation that the primate climbed on the roof of its Gitaru power station and fell onto a transformer, tripping it.
“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,” KenGen said in a press statement.
The firm said it secured its installations with an electric fence to keep animals out. It, however, didn’t explain how the animal got into the area.
“We regret this isolated incident and the company is looking at ways of further enhancing security at all our power plants,” the utility said.
