Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and device for handling a cell outage. The method for handling a cell outage includes: receiving, by a first base station, an energy saving activation message sent by a second base station when a cell outage happens to a second cell, where the energy saving activation message is used to disable the energy saving function; transferring, by the first base station, the first cell from the energy saving state to the normal state according to the energy saving activation message, or keeping a third cell in the normal state until learning that the cell outage of the second cell is solved. This method prevents a coverage blind area in the network when a cell outage happens to a second cell that covers the area of a first cell which is in the energy saving state.