A construction worker took out a 500-kilovolt transmission line, knocking out electricity to the entire southeastern region of Vietnam and large parts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, reports Cambodia Daily.
The blackout, which lasted about ten hours, began when a crane operator knocked over a tree that landed on the transmission line, according to EVN, the nation's state electricity company.
Vietnam supplies Cambodia with about 40% of its electricity, which in turn keeps the country's water flowing:
"When the water supply factory loses electricity from the EdC, the machines—which use electricity to work—can't pump water to the pipes," a Cambodian official told the Daily.
The BBC reports that businesses all over Vietnam were shut down during the outage, while streets were jammed with motorists as traffic lights failed.
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