Enlarge image
Power poles in Germany: "We cannot rule out widespread power failures"
Photo: Federico Gambarini / dpa
The German Association of Towns and Municipalities fears power cuts in the coming winter in view of the gas crisis.
"There is a risk of a blackout," said the general manager of the association, Gerd Landsberg, of the "Welt am Sonntag".
Both hostile hacker attacks and “an overload of the power grid – for example when the 650,000 fan heaters sold this year go on line if the gas supply fails” are “realistic scenarios”.
"We cannot rule out widespread power failures," emphasized Landsberg.
In this case, Germany is not sufficiently armed.
The federal government has recognized the situation, but is not acting sufficiently.
"The preparation for real crisis situations must be dealt with much more intensively," Landsberg demanded.
Germany must “expand civil disaster control much more intensively”.
The head of the association called on every single citizen to prepare for crisis situations.
"I advocate taking the recommendation of the Federal Office for Disaster Control seriously, according to which citizens should have water and food in the house for 14 days," said Landsberg.
Unfortunately, hardly anyone follows this recommendation.
Every citizen must be aware of what happens when there is no electricity.
"Then there's no water, you can't fill up, after two days you can't charge your cell phone," Landsberg explained.
"We are in no way prepared for such a scenario."
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had assured on Wednesday at the general debate in the Bundestag that his government had made good provisions for the coming “winter of challenges”.
He pointed out that the possibility had been created of keeping two nuclear power plants in an emergency reserve over the turn of the year "so that there is never a power shortage in Germany".
phw/AFP
