Copper thieves cut power to 900 homes in the middle of the night

In the middle of the night, the lights suddenly went out in Dortmund-Kirchlinde – and the reason initially sounds almost unbelievable. Unknown copper thieves flipped a switch inside an old, vacant industrial building, apparently so they could steal cables nearby. Their manipulation affected an entire neighbourhood: around 900 households were without electricity for roughly two hours during the night leading into Thursday, 13 August 2026.

According to a police spokesperson, the offenders gained access to the unused building in Kirchlinde. There they operated a switch in order to steal cables in an adjacent area. What was apparently only one step in the thieves’ raid cut power to hundreds of homes. Dortmund utility company DEW21 confirmed both the outage and its duration of about two hours.

For residents, the outage appears to have come completely without warning. At night, it quickly becomes clear how dependent a household is on a stable electricity supply. Lights, refrigerators, internet routers and chargers stop working. Electric shutters, garage doors or medical aids may also be affected. Anyone relying on a mains-powered alarm clock, or going to bed with a phone that has little battery left, suddenly notices how disruptive even a comparatively short outage can be.

The cause makes the incident particularly striking. Neither a storm nor a technical failure was the immediate trigger; instead, it was apparently a deliberate act connected with metal theft. Copper attracts thieves because wires and cables can be sold as scrap metal. At the same time, interference with electrical equipment can cause consequences far beyond the value of the stolen material. Switchgear and cables form part of an interconnected network, and anyone tampering with them without authorisation can endanger the electricity supply as well as their own life.

For grid operators, an incident like this also creates extra work. First, technicians have to determine why an area has lost power and whether damaged or manipulated equipment can be re-energised safely. Only then can a stable supply be restored. In Kirchlinde, DEW21 said power was back after around two hours. The suspected thieves, however, had not been caught by Thursday morning.

The case also comes during a week in which Dortmund had already experienced another significant outage. On the previous Saturday, according to DEW21, around 1,200 households and parts of the city centre temporarily lost electricity. That outage was caused by a defective supply cable. The two incidents are not connected, but together they show how different the causes of a power cut can be: one technical failure, followed only days later by an apparently criminal act.

For the public, it is an uncomfortable reminder that electricity does not fail only during huge blackouts. A single intervention at the wrong point can be enough to disconnect hundreds of households at the same time. Torches, charged power banks and a small reserve for essential devices are therefore useful even during short regional outages. Police in Dortmund are now searching for the unknown copper thieves whose night-time raid left 900 households in the dark for two hours.

Source: dpa, 13 August 2026, citing Dortmund police and DEW21; WELT, “Kupferdiebe knipsen 900 Haushalten den Strom aus”, 13 August 2026; Süddeutsche Zeitung, 13 August 2026; WDR, “Stromausfall legt Dortmunder Innenstadt lahm”, 10 August 2026.