Volcano Group Cuts Power to 45,000 Berlin Homes
SkimNews Take
The prolonged Berlin blackout, regardless of the saboteur's motive, reveals a critical vulnerability in urban infrastructure to even an unsophisticated, sustained attack.
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- Volcano Group claimed responsibility for the January 3 Berlin blackout in a 4,500-word statement posted on Indymedia, signed "Volcano Group: Turn off the juice of the rulers" and titled "Shutting down fossil fuel power stations is handiwork," making it the group's at least seventh attack in Berlin since 2011.
- Stromnetz Berlin said five high-voltage cables on a Teltow canal bridge were set ablaze, cutting power to 45,000 homes, 2,200 businesses, and four hospitals; 35,000 homes remained without electricity for five days after 10,000 were restored the next day.
- Hubertus hospital director Michael Schmidt planned to evacuate 150 patients when heating failed because gas pumps sat outside generator coverage, though technicians rerouted power and Stromnetz restored hospital electricity by the next morning.
- Volcano Group attacks on power lines supplying the Tesla Gigafactory outside Berlin in 2021 and 2024 caused losses "in the high nine-figure range" according to a Tesla official, with the 2024 claim signed "Volcano Group shut down Tesla."
- Germany's federal prosecutor's office has four active Volcano Group investigations dating back to 2011 and has made no arrests; a 2023 trial of two leftwing suspects ended when a judge ruled the state had no hard evidence, and a March raid of 14 far-left properties produced no arrest warrants.
- Extremism researchers Hendrik Hansen and Felix Neumann told the Guardian the perpetrators appear highly skilled and leave no physical traces, noting that open-source online manuals cover incendiary device construction, CCTV avoidance, and timing attacks.
Why it matters: Four federal investigations spanning 15 years, zero arrests, and infrastructure attacks causing nine-figure losses to Tesla show that Germany's authorities cannot identify saboteurs who openly post confessions online. The blackout's five-day impact on four hospitals and thousands of residents — including near-evacuation of 150 patients at Hubertus hospital — demonstrates the real-world cost of that investigative failure, while March's 500-officer raid producing no warrants suggests the gap between security apparatus and results remains wide.
