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About 25,500 households in the southwest of Berlin remain without electricity this Tuesday for the fourth consecutive day after the sabotage committed last Saturday, which was claimed by an extreme left-wing group.
According to the electricity grid operator Stromnetz Berlin, approximately 25,500 households - out of the initially affected 45,000 - and 1,200 commercial premises - out of 2,200 - in the districts of Nikolassee, Zehlendorf, Wannsee and Lichterfelde are still without electricity supply at the moment.
The five hospitals in the affected area are now back in power, but twenty schools remain closed for the second consecutive day after the end of the Christmas holidays, according to the local newspaper Tagesspiegel.
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According to this media outlet, this is the longest blackout in Berlin since the end of World War II, having already surpassed in duration one of 60 hours that occurred last autumn in the eastern districts of Treptow and Köpenick as a result of another alleged arson attack. The authorities of the German capital continued their efforts this Tuesday to alleviate the impact on the population, and Mayor Kai Wegner announced that the city-state government will assume the costs of those affected who want to stay in hotels until they have electricity back at home. Five emergency shelters have also been enabled where those affected can spend the night, warm up, or charge their mobile phones, while in other locations the police and the army are distributing hot meals. The commuter trains on lines S1 and S7 resumed regular service this Tuesday, although according to Deutsche Bahn, there are still occasional delays, while on Monday night the emergency mobile network was restored, allowing, after three days without coverage, calls to 112. The cause of the blackout was the intentional burning of some cables near the Lichterfelde gas plant, the consequences of which the Berlin network operator expects to have completely remedied by next Thursday. The action was claimed in a statement signed by the self-proclaimed 'Grupo Volcán', an anarchist group that in the last decade has claimed responsibility for numerous similar attacks, including against the Tesla gigafactory located on the outskirts of Berlin. According to the manifesto, which the police consider authentic, the blackout was an unexpected consequence of the action, whose objective was to sabotage the Berlin Lichterfelde gas plant, for environmental reasons and to fight against the capitalist system.
