Clumsy crane driver accidentally plunges Vietnam into darkness

Danger! Danger! High voltage!

By Eoghan Doherty

It all happened back in ‘Nam... quite literally on Wednesday actually.

A Vietnamese crane driver accidentally plunged a third of his country and parts of neighbouring Cambodia into complete darkness after knocking over a tree onto high-voltage transmission lines.

This JOE once forgot to put the fish into a Maccy D’s Filet-O-Fish but, as work accidents go, this is right up there with the most am-Asian of them.

According to the BBC, officials from EVN, the country’s national electricity provider, say that about 22 of Vietnam’s 63 provinces were blacked out and that most of the south-east of the country was without power for around ten hours.

It’s safe to say that the man’s bosses were probably pretty Hanoi-ed at him. (That’s a brilliant grand pun on the word ‘annoyed’ in case your Vietnamese isn’t up to scratch).

The black-out led to restaurants and shops closing, some of the worst traffic jams in the country’s history and more stubbed toes than you can shake an angry fist at (we presume).

Reports are now claiming that the incident clearly exposed the fragile nature of the Vietnamese electricty grid but we at JOE reckon it didn’t really expose it at all because, they were, like, all in the dark and stuff.