Berlin Teltow Canal Arson
What Happened
At around 6:00 AM on a freezing January morning, attackers set fire to a cable bridge spanning the Teltow Canal in southwest Berlin. The bridge carried five 110 kV high-voltage cables and ten 10 kV medium-voltage cables to the Lichterfelde combined heat and power plant. The fire destroyed all fifteen cables, collapsing power across multiple districts. (continue below)
Around 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses lost electricity. Because the attack also severed the connection to the Lichterfelde CHP plant, thousands also lost heating in sub-zero temperatures. Hospitals and nursing homes were affected. An emergency shelter was set up at a sports center. Restoration took 4-5 days -- the longest power outage in Berlin since 1945.
The Vulkangruppe claimed responsibility, calling the attack "an act of resistance" targeting fossil fuel infrastructure. The investigation was escalated to the Federal Prosecutor under terrorism statutes. The BKA offered a 1 million EUR reward.
Timeline
Root Cause
Physical destruction of a distribution chokepoint. The cable bridge concentrated 15 critical cables -- both transmission and distribution level -- in a single accessible location over a waterway. No redundant paths existed. Destroying this one structure severed both electricity and heating supply to an entire section of the city. The same pattern as the Johannisthal attack four months earlier: exposed, above-ground infrastructure with no security and no redundancy.