Hundreds of thousands of people in and around Dresden were without electricity on Monday. The police suspect an accident – with a commercially available balloon with a metal layer.
Dresden – After the major power outage in Dresden, the police assume an accident in a substation with a normal balloon. The power outage on Monday was triggered by a commercially available balloon that is used at weddings or children’s birthdays, according to the police.
The balloon had not been prepared and there was no letter of confession, said police spokesman Thomas Geithner on Tuesday at a joint press conference with the network operator SachsenEnergie. A resolution cannot be ruled out one hundred percent, but according to the current state of affairs, the police assume a coincidence.
On Monday afternoon, around 300,000 households in Dresden and the surrounding area had no electricity at times. Companies and tram traffic were also affected. When searching for the cause of the malfunction, the police found charred remains of a balloon. At first it was unclear whether the metal-coated balloon that presumably caused the power failure had been controlled in a targeted manner or had accidentally reached the neuralgic point of the Dresden Süd feed-in substation. dpa
