Southwest Berlin starts another day without electricity

Following the major power outage on Saturday due to an arson attack in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district, several schools will also remain closed. Many households could be without power for days to come.

For many pupils, the Monday after the Christmas vacations is starting differently than expected. Parents can fall back on emergency care in other schools. Daycare centers are also affected.

For those who were unable to stay with family or friends in other parts of the German capital, the start of the first full week of the new year means having to cope without electricity and heating in the snow. The police and emergency services are helping wherever they can. The German Armed Forces are also providing support, with Berlin declaring a so-called "major emergency situation".

According to the operator Stromnetz Berlin, the damage to the power grid is severe and repairs are complicated: It is not expected that all electricity customers could be supplied again until Thursday afternoon.

Power outage expected to last until Thursday

The attack on cables on a cable bridge over the Teltow Canal to the Lichterfelde power station has been causing the power outage since early Saturday morning, which initially affected 45,000 households and more than 2,200 businesses. In the meantime, 14,000 households and 500 commercial customers have been reconnected, as Stromnetz Berlin announced in the evening. The districts affected are Nikolassee, Zehlendorf, Wannsee and Lichterfelde.

Since Sunday, politicians and authorities have been certain that the attack was politically motivated and that left-wing extremists were behind it. According to Senator Iris Spranger, a letter of confession received by the authorities from suspected left-wing extremists is authentic.

The long letter from the alleged perpetrators, the "Vulkan Group", bears the headline "Cutting off the power to those in power". "In the greed for energy, the earth is being drained, sucked dry, burned, maltreated, burned down, raped, destroyed," it said. The gas-fired power plant in Lichterfelde had been "successfully sabotaged". "Power outages were not the target of the action, but the fossil fuel industry," the group said in the letter.

Several large clinics in the districts were reconnected to the power grid after a day and did not have to be evacuated thanks to emergency generators. However, the power outage also affected numerous care facilities and people in need of care in their homes. The fire department and aid organizations set up emergency shelters.