Berlin authorities said a fire damaged high-voltage power lines in south-west Berlin, leaving about 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses in four districts without electricity for days, with heating and internet services also disrupted.
The fire broke out on Saturday morning on a cable bridge over the Teltow Canal, near the Lichterfelde power plant, according to local authorities. Officials said that initially more than 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses across the four districts had no electricity.
Franziska Giffey, Berlin’s Senator for Economic Affairs, described the outage as “a particularly severe power outage affecting tens of thousands of households and businesses, including care facilities, hospitals, numerous social institutions and companies.”
While power had been restored to thousands of households by Sunday, authorities estimated that many others would likely remain without electricity until Thursday. They said snowy weather and freezing temperatures slowed repair and restoration efforts, making life more difficult for those affected.
Authorities said they were investigating the incident as a possible act of arson. They compared the situation to a similar power outage last September in southeast Berlin, when radical activists claimed responsibility for that earlier disruption.
City officials said they were working to confirm the authenticity of a letter claiming responsibility for the latest incident. Berlin’s Mayor Kai Wegner, cited by a German news agency, said the perpetrators were “clearly left-wing extremists” and called it unacceptable that they had attacked the power grid and thereby endangered human lives.