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This warning day is the real disaster
| Reading time: 2 minutes
This was the national warning day
At 11 o’clock it was noisy in Germany. During a nationwide test alarm, sirens sounded, announcements were made through loudspeakers, and messages were sent through social media and warning apps. But the disaster exercise was not really easy.
The nationwide warning day campaign is over. He was prepared for three years. But in much of the republic the civil protection system has failed. Not even cell phone messages were sent on time. A feeling of security does not arise.
WIf you have not heard a siren, the warning signal will be faxed or mailed within the next 14 days. On social media, scorn and mockery spills over the much-heralded first day of national warning since the end of the Cold War. In reality, sirens, alert applications, and loudspeaker trucks must be tested throughout the republic so that the population is aware of an actual disaster between 11:00 and 11:20 a.m.
But after the twenty minute window of time it is clear: in this Germany I am afraid of a real catastrophe, because our warning systems have failed. The only thing that cried in Berlin was a child on the playground. The warning sirens were already dismantled in the 1990s, the loudspeaker trucks were not in use.
A look at social media shows: This disastrous image runs across the country. Neither in big cities like Frankfurt nor in rural regions like Pirmasens did the population notice anything about the exercise. If there had been a real catastrophe there, the population would have been exposed without suspecting anything.
The prestigious project itself, Warning Day 2020, was targeted against the enforcement authorities, says WELT author Florian Gehm.
Source: Jens Büttner / dpa-Zentralbild / dpa, Martin Lengemann
Whether trucks with speakers and sirens are needed across the country is at least debatable. That the federal “modular warning system” and the connected mobile phone app “NINA” (federal emergency news and information app) failed to even deliver a push message on time at 11:00 am is an accusation of digitization. Planning for a nationwide alert day dates back to 2017.
Since then, the federal, state, and local governments have had to prepare for this test case. No illness, no accident and no terrorist announces a catastrophe with a period of several years. Then the population must be warned of a real danger, immediately and reliably.
The Federal Office for Civil Protection and Assistance in Disaster Cases (BBK) had promised that the alert day could “from our point of view rather contribute to a greater sense of security in the population with the information provided there.” Instead, the opposite has happened. That is the real disaster, the real warning.
The prestigious project itself was directed against the executing authorities. It has become a warning day for outdated civil protection plans, which experts say have not been updated since the end of the Cold War. Now we can only hope that the sirens of the responsible offices do not stop sounding.
