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Boats and ships lie in front of the backdrop of the Klingenberg thermal power station in the port of Alt Stralau in Berlin in the ice of the Spree (archive image)
Photo: Robert Schlesinger / dpa
Thousands of people in some parts of the city in the east of Berlin were left without heating and warm water on Sunday evening - with outside temperatures of around three degrees Celsius.
This was announced by the Lichtenberg district office in the evening via the warning app Nina.
According to the energy supplier Vattenfall, around 90,000 households are affected.
The reason was therefore a brief power failure in the network of the state's own electricity network operator Stromnetz Berlin.
According to Vattenfall, this affected not only numerous households in the afternoon, but also its own Klingenberg thermal power station on the Spree in the Rummelsburg district.
The power plant had to be shut down.
According to Vattenfall, the water in the pipes of around 90,000 households, especially in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde, was therefore gradually cooling down.
According to the Lichtenberg district office, people in Karlshorst, Oberschöneweide and parts of Treptow-Köpenick were also affected.
The company assumes that the heat supply will be restored in all households by midnight.
It takes a few hours for the water in all pipes to warm up again.
Property managers and caretakers could not change the situation, it said.
Fault at high voltage level eliminated after just three minutes
The district office and the fire brigade advised to keep windows and doors closed.
Open fires or barbecues should not be lit under any circumstances.
Ovens should not be used for heating either.
People should keep warm with clothes and blankets and also help their elderly neighbors.
The Klingenberg thermal power station supplies more than 300,000 households with electricity and heat.
According to the network operator Stromnetz Berlin, the power outage in the afternoon was due to a technical fault in a substation in Berlin-Friedrichshain.
There, as well as in Prenzlauer Berg and Lichtenberg, around 20,000 households were without electricity for a few minutes, as a spokeswoman said.
The fault on the high voltage level was therefore resolved after just three minutes.
Vattenfall, on the other hand, spoke of around 370,000 people affected by the power failure.
However, the train stations Ostbahnhof, Warschauer Straße, Ostkreuz and Lichtenberg were temporarily without light.
Train traffic was not affected.
tfb / dpa
