100,000 citizens for hours without electricity - also on Monday failures

Power problems in Saxony-Anhalt: There were again outages in the Harz district on Monday morning. According to the network operator Avacon, the electricity in Halberstadt and Blankenburg went out again in the morning.

The cities of Halberstadt, Blankenburg, parts of Wernigerode and several communities were without electricity for several hours during the night from Sunday to Monday. Tens of thousands of households were affected. The situation center of the state government in Magdeburg had issued an official danger report around 12:30 a.m., which was canceled after around three hours. The cause of the failure was a defect in a local substation, as it was initially said.

As reported by the "Bild" newspaper, the disruption occurred in the Hüttenrode plant. There was a voltage drop after a high-voltage line broke. At 3.30 a.m. the electricity was back, it was said.

The operator later specified that the disruption was weather-related. In the meantime, the residents have been able to be supplied again, said a spokeswoman for Avacon. However, it cannot currently be ruled out that there will be further failures due to the extreme weather situation. "We try to keep the failures as low as possible."

The reason for the renewed blackouts in Halberstadt and Blankenburg “is still the ice on the conductors. Due to the higher weight and the wind, the conductor cables can vibrate more, which leads to short circuits," the network operator said.

The MDR reported, citing the fire brigade, that around 100,000 citizens were affected by the power failure on Sunday night. In a few cases, however, the power failure left permanent damage. In the Halberstadt Clinic, for example, a computer tomograph and an X-ray machine were damaged by the sudden power failure.

According to the information, neither hospitals nor nursing homes had to be evacuated because of the power failure. District administrator Thomas Balcerowski nevertheless pushed for the purchase of emergency power generators in order to be prepared for future power failures.

Editor's note: We have updated the text after the renewed failures