A fire at an electrical substation in the southwestern German city of Reutlingen knocked out power to thousands of households overnight, as authorities announced Monday that they are investigating arson after discovering multiple ignition sources at the scene, Anadolu reports.

The city of Reutlingen said about 7,600 households remained without power Monday morning, warning that a reliable timeline for full restoration is not yet available.

The outage began around 1:45 a.m. local time (Sunday) when the Reutlingen-West substation went offline, German news agency dpa reported. At the peak of the outage, about 20,000 subscribers were affected, authorities said. By 7:15 a.m., power had been restored to about half of them, including the downtown area and the local hospital.

A spokesman for regional grid operator Netze BW told reporters there are clear indications of arson. Investigators found “three hot spots”, while a fence and area in front of the facility were damaged.

A spokesman for the Baden-Württemberg state criminal police office said officers were “investigating in all directions”.

The incident is similar to two suspected far-left arson attacks on Berlin’s power grid last year. In the September 9, 2025 attack, approximately 50,000 homes and 2,000 businesses lost power, and service was not fully restored until the afternoon of September 11 – approximately 60 hours later.

Source: prizrenpost