The southeast of France experienced a second major blackout just 24 hours after the Saturday outage in Cannes, which disrupted the closing ceremony of the renowned Cannes Film Festival. In the early hours of Sunday, Nice became the target of another apparent sabotage, with a fire at a local electrical transformer cutting power to approximately 45,000 homes, according to electricity operator Enedis.
The fire broke out around 2:00 AM at a substation in the Moulins district, west of Nice. The city’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, publicly denounced the incident as a “malicious act.” The outage extended to nearby towns, including Saint-Laurent-du-Var and Cagnes-sur-Mer. Enedis confirmed that power was fully restored by 6:00 AM.