Thousands of Berliners are facing power outages until Thursday after a left-extreme anarchist triggered a bomb attack on power cables in the German capital.
Around 45,000 households and 2,000 firms were left in the dark – and many without heat – on a snowy Saturday night after a collective calling itself ‘Volcano Group’ claimed responsibility for the attack near a gas power station.
The group, also linked to a 2024 attack on the Tesla plant near Berlin, said the latest intervention was an “act of resistance” against the ongoing “greed for energy ... that is sucking dry, burning, maltreating, raping” the planet.
Berlin’s governing mayor Kai Wegner said “protection of critical infrastructure was of the highest priority” and that all was being done “to restore energy as quickly as possible”.
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Economics and energy minister Franziska Giffey conceded the repair work was “complex” and, after recent snowfall, “complicated further by the bad weather and ground frost”.
On Sunday morning Berlin’s electricity authority restored power to 7,000 households and 150 firms but, with five high-tension cables damaged, it will be Thursday before normal service is restored.
As well as homes and businesses, the power outage hit traffic lights and the outer arms of the electric S-Bahn suburban rail service, requiring replacement bus services.
In a lengthy letter claiming responsibility, the ‘Volcano Group’ said the attack was a pushback against “our addiction to small devices with “We gobble up the colourful pictures ... and are losing contact with what seems normal to us,” it wrote. “We are fearful of what is happening, burying ourselves deeper into screens.”
German antiterrorism authorities describe the Volcano Group as a left-extremist terrorist group and were studying a note on Sunday considered to be of “credible” authenticity.
Within hours of Saturday’s blackout, emergency centres were set up across the Steglitz and Zehlendorf in town, community and sport halls, run by the local fire brigade, churches and the German Red Cross. Some visitors stayed for an hour, for soup and to charge their smartphones.
“It’s only times like this you realise how dependent you are on your phone,” said Miriam, a mother of two. “We had no mobile data, no maps, couldn’t charge our phones and were really left to our own devices.”
Her husband Matthias said their neighbours were unable to get into their home.
“They have everything in a smart home network so not even the window shutters are working,” he said.
Elderly couple Birgit and Horst visited the Red Cross emergency facility in the Cole Sports Centre to warm up but decided to stay the night.
“I hadn’t thought of doing that but they have camp beds and it was so terribly cold in our house,” said Birgit. “I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life.”
