ConfirmedCommunications failure

'Monkey caused blackout' explanation

Energy & Infrastructure2025Very high media attention

What happened

The Energy Ministry initially said a monkey contact at a substation had triggered the island-wide outage, an explanation that became internationally mocked before later technical clarification.

Accountability assessment

What this record does and does not attribute to the government (see methodology). Where an underlying problem predates this government, only its handling is attributed.

A communications and diagnostic-confidence failure layered on top of the grid problem.

Evidence label: Communications failure (A documented failure: a procedural breach, official inquiry or court finding, an admitted error, or a fact-checked false claim.). Record as of edition 2026-08-24.

Sources

Connected incidents

Relationships explicitly listed in the source report, not a claim of a common perpetrator or conspiracy.

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Part of pattern

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