Overview
- The final households and businesses were reconnected on Wednesday morning, ending a four-day outage that authorities described as Berlin’s longest since World War II.
- The blackout began Saturday when a fire damaged high-voltage cables on a bridge over the Teltow Canal, initially cutting power to about 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses.
- Investigators are assessing a statement by the self-styled Vulkangruppe, which said it targeted the fossil-fuel energy industry rather than aiming to cause outages.
- Germany’s federal prosecutor took over the case on suspicions of anticonstitutional sabotage, membership in a terrorist organization, and arson.
- Local trains were halted and shops, schools, hospitals, and care homes were disrupted, as the city opened shelters and deployed emergency services and the army to support residents.