ANP / Hollandse HoogteAn air raid siren installation in Mierlo
NOS Nieuws•gisteren, 21:33
The air raid siren that warns of calamities will be abolished at the end of next year and replaced by NL-Alert. This is stated in a letter to the House of Representatives from outgoing Minister Yesilgöz of Justice and Security. NL-Alert, which sends notifications to mobile phones, has now been significantly improved and the siren hardly offers any advantages anymore, she writes.
The current warning and alarm system (WAS) with the sirens, which are tested every first Monday of the month at 12 noon, has been in place since 1998. The 4,200 alarm poles can “in the best case scenario be heard by about 75 percent of people” , writes the minister.
Stopping the air raid siren has been a subject of discussion for years and has been postponed several times because the replacement alarm system NL-Alert did not work well enough. For example, people who live in rural areas and close to the border often did not receive the messages. On other phones, messages sometimes arrived ten times.
No added value
Last year, the Dutch Institute of Public Safety conducted research into the added value of the WAS poles and concluded that it cannot be demonstrated. The researchers also found that NL-Alert has fully developed and proven itself in recent years.
ANPEen NL-Alert
Since 2012, governments have been able to use NL-Alert to send alarm messages via cell towers within a specific area. Since its inception, the communication tool has been used 538 times. Nowadays there is also an NL-Alert app. The test message reached 92 percent of Dutch people during the last measurement in December.
The maintenance contracts for the WAS poles expire at the end of 2025. The minister wants to seize that moment to dismantle the system. Additional warning systems will remain in place at a number of high-risk locations.
2024-03-01 20:33:44
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