Multi-day power outage for 45,000 Berlin homes after suspected arson attack

5 days ago (theguardian.com)

> Germany has been on high alert for sabotage activities directed at its infrastructure, including from foreign actors such as Russia.

This sentence kind of implies that foreign actors committed the attack, but a leftist group took credit for it[1].

[1]: https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2026/01/berlin-suedwes...

20 years in prison for everyone responsible should quickly sort this out. This is sabotage regardless of the motive.

Single point of failure and 45k people are without power for multiple days.

  • Very few electric customers are served by more than one substation, that substation and the distribution wiring between the substation and the customer are going to be a SPOF, except for the few customers with access to multiple substations.

    Some substations don't have redundant feeder power either, although that's more often the case where geography makes it difficult (islands/peninsulas)... But the mention of wiring on a bridge might be an indication that is a geographically difficult area of Berlin?

  • Most infrastructure is fragile and is one step away from going down. It basically can’t operate without the assumption that people won’t mess it up.