Overview
- Berlin’s chancellery confirmed Kai Wegner played tennis for about an hour on the first day of the outage, and the mayor later acknowledged his earlier account of working all day was incomplete.
- Opposition figures from the Greens and FDP condemned his conduct, with Berlin’s FDP general secretary urging Wegner to resign, and SPD officials criticizing his shifting statements.
- The CDU parliamentary group held an urgent teleconference to scrutinize the crisis management and discuss the controversy over the mayor’s actions, according to dpa.
- Power was largely restored by Wednesday after a suspected left‑wing extremist arson attack on a cable bridge cut electricity to about 45,000 households, affecting roughly 100,000 people in the city’s southwest.
- Journalists and analysts highlighted systemic flaws in disaster management, noting a central crisis team was convened only Saturday evening and a large‑scale emergency was declared Sunday noon, prompting calls for structural reform.