Power Outage Hits Thousands of Homes and Businesses in South-West Berlin in Suspected Arson Attack
About 45,500 homes and 2,200 businesses in south-west Berlin were left without power after high-voltage cables on a bridge near the Lichterfelde power plant were damaged in a suspected arson attack. Emergency services were alerted early on Saturday.
Authorities estimate that roughly 35,000 households will remain without electricity until Thursday afternoon, with the remaining homes expected to be reconnected by early Sunday. The outage is affecting local district heating systems that run on electricity.
Repair work is expected to take a very long time, with snowfall and near-freezing temperatures complicating the laying of new underground cables and hindering the restoration efforts.
Police have deployed around 160 officers to the Lichterfelde site and are investigating the incident as arson. Residents have been urged to stay with friends or relatives, use mobile phones sparingly, and keep torches ready.
Local train stations were also affected; electronic information signs and ticket machines were not working, although trains continued to run.
Berlin’s economy minister, Franziska Giffey, described the outage as particularly serious and said it was worse than the September outage, which was also linked to arson suspicions. That previous incident involved a fire on electricity pylons, with police suspecting arson and an unnamed anarchist group claiming responsibility online.
Germany remains on high alert for sabotage of critical infrastructure, including potential actions by foreign actors such as Russia.
