The chairman of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, Gerd Landsberg, warns Germany of widespread power failures in the coming winter. He also urges citizens to stock up in case of an emergency.
Are Germany threatening bad blackouts in winter? According to Gerd Landsberg, chairman of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, that is the case. “There is a risk of a blackout,” he says in an interview with “Welt am Sonntag”. “We cannot rule out widespread power failures.”
One risk factor is, for example, “if the 650,000 fan heaters sold this year go online, the gas supply should fail”. Landsberg also described hostile hacker attacks that could lead to blackouts as “realistic scenarios”.
The problem from the point of view of the head of the association of cities: the federal government and the population are not sufficiently prepared for these scenarios. The government would have recognized the situation, but from his point of view it was doing too little. “The preparation for real crisis situations must be dealt with much more intensively,” warns Landsberg and demands that Germany must “expand civil disaster control much more intensively”.
But he also sharply criticizes the citizens. 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. We are in no way prepared for such a scenario.”
His appeal to the citizens: Everyone should take the recommendation of the Federal Office for Disaster Control seriously and have water and food in the house for 14 days. “Unfortunately, hardly anyone follows this recommendation.”
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