{"id":396569,"date":"2026-01-08T17:51:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/396569\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T17:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:51:12","slug":"berlin-outage-highlights-german-vulnerability-to-sabotage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/396569\/","title":{"rendered":"Berlin outage highlights German vulnerability to sabotage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessica ParkerBerlin correspondent<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

Lena’s family have been cooking on a camping stove<\/p>\n

Power is being restored to the last homes hit by a five-day blackout in Germany’s snow-covered capital, Berlin.<\/p>\n

The outage was caused by a suspected arson attack and came as temperatures dipped below freezing.<\/p>\n

It is reportedly the longest blackout in the capital’s post-war history. A far-left militant group has claimed it was behind the outage.<\/p>\n

This week’s images of residents – young and old – living through a prolonged blackout in the country’s capital has reignited a debate about Germany’s vulnerability to sabotage attacks, whether by domestic or foreign actors.<\/p>\n

Schools, hospitals and care homes are among the tens of thousands of properties that were affected in south-west Berlin.<\/p>\n

In Berlin’s Steglitz-Zehlendorf district, on Mexikoplatz, a police van drove around announcing the imminent return of power over a tannoy.<\/p>\n

Residents regularly approached a group of emergency service workers for the latest information.<\/p>\n

Lena said her family had felt “lost” – relying on a battery-powered radio for updates.<\/p>\n

They have been cooking on a camping stove at home while trying to make sure their water pipes didn’t freeze.<\/p>\n

Reinhold, 79, was still without power on Wednesday morning and going to his daughter’s house to get warm.<\/p>\n

“But I always came back to sleep here even in the cold weather with a bobble hat on and sweater and a woollen blanket.”<\/p>\n

The retired architect said that he was used to hardship having been born in post-war Germany.<\/p>\n

“I was born in 1947. When my mother and I came from the hospital… it was -20C in our shack.<\/p>\n

“My parents took turns every hour to see whether my hands were tucked in under the cover so my fingers wouldn’t freeze off.”<\/p>\n

\"Close<\/p>\n

Reinhold has been sleeping in a woolly hat to keep warm at night<\/p>\n

Restoring electricity was happening on a “step-by-step basis”, said fire service spokesman Adrian Wentzel.<\/p>\n

Resources have been pulled in from across Germany, he told the BBC, with an estimated 100,000 people affected.<\/p>\n

Hospitals have had to rely on emergency generators while some schools have had to close.<\/p>\n

It was early on Saturday when several cables on a bridge were spotted burning near the Lichterfelde gas-fired power plant.<\/p>\n

Subsequently, the far-left Vulkangruppe – or Volcano Group – appeared to claim responsibility, saying its target was the fossil energy industry.<\/p>\n

“We apologise to the less wealthy people in the south-west of Berlin,” a lengthy statement read.<\/p>\n

“With the many owners of villas in these districts, our sympathy is limited,” it added, likely referring to the fact that Steglitz-Zehlendorf is one of Berlin’s wealthiest neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n

However, a different statement was later published online on the Indymedia site – purportedly from Vulkangruppe’s founders.<\/p>\n

“We expressly distance ourselves from all actions of recent years,” it said.<\/p>\n

\"AFPAFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Traffic lights were cut off, too<\/p>\n

Another recent high-profile incident saw activists admit being behind a suspected arson attack that halted production at the huge Tesla factory just outside Berlin in 2024.<\/p>\n

The exact structure and workings of Vulkangruppe is unclear, but German authorities describe them as left-wing extremists and say attacks have happened at irregular intervals since 2011 in Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg.<\/p>\n

Domestic intelligence state that the group’s aim is to disrupt “the day-to-day functions in order to harm the hated capitalist system”.<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors are investigating the latest incident as a terrorism offence, with possible charges including “membership in a terrorist organisation, sabotage, arson and disruption of public services”.<\/p>\n

This week’s outage was larger and lasted longer than a similar incident in September.<\/p>\n

As the power supply stabilised on Thursday, Berlin’s Mayor Kai Wegner came under fresh scrutiny for his handling of the outage.<\/p>\n

Wegner was reported to have been playing tennis with his partner on Saturday lunchtime, hours after the blackout began.<\/p>\n

According to Deutsche Welle, he has said he needed time to “clear his head” after taking phone calls and that he remained reachable.<\/p>\n

Plans for a federal law to protect critical infrastructure have been in the works for years but were only presented to the German parliament in November.<\/p>\n

The “Kritis” bill sets out plans to identify key critical infrastructure transport as well as introduce minimum protection standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessica ParkerBerlin correspondent BBC Lena’s family have been cooking on a camping stove Power is being restored to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-396569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}