Today is the first Monday of the month and that means that at 12:00 we can once again enjoy a whoe-oeeehhh sound blaring through the streets. For some tourists that is a bit of a shock, that test moment of our air raid siren. It’s going to disappear soon. Not just the testing, but the air raid siren itself. And not everyone agrees with that.
Air raid siren
The government has announced that the air raid siren will disappear at the end of 2025. So it’s not just the testing moment that’s going away: the entire air raid siren will be removed next year. Why? Because the Dutch government believes that the NL-Alert system is sufficient. In fact, the reach of NL-Alert would be better. About everyone has a telephone and can receive such an NL-Alert, which can also provide much more information than just an alarm that sounds.
It is a controversial plan, which is opposed by the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Safety Region, among others NOS that it is irresponsible and that both systems are needed to inform people about emergency situations. He is particularly concerned about the percentage of people who can receive an NL-Alert, namely 92 percent. In his region, 100,000 people will not be informed. At the same time, the question is who those people are: for example, are there many people in nursing homes who will hear from the staff that something is going on, or is this a completely different group?
NL alert
However, that is not the only problem. People with low literacy may not understand what is in the NL-Alert. This is a somewhat strange argument, since the air raid siren provides no additional information at all. But it is also stated that sirens are a bit more secure than smartphones that can lose network or power.
When the air raid siren disappears, it means the end of an era. The air raid siren has been in place since 1952, but the alarm system was significantly overhauled in the 1990s. That test on the first Monday of the month started in 2003. When they go during the test, they go off for 1 minute and 26 seconds, it is a real situation, then it is 3 minutes in a row, and then again for 3 minutes at a time.
First Monday of the month
Every first Monday of the month, a button is pressed in 112 control rooms to sound the alarm poles. The firefighters who normally answer the phone at 112 are also responsible for sounding that familiar alarm sound. And yes, that is really done manually. The purpose of the air raid siren is to alert people about an air raid or dangerous substances released into the air during a fire. If you hear the alarm, the following applies: ‘Go inside, close doors and windows and look for information through the media.’ It is also wise to turn off the ventilation.
Especially now that there is NL-Alert, you notice that this is often used: the air raid siren is a step further. For example, recently we received an NL-Alert during a fire, but the air raid siren did not go off. At the same time, not everyone is a fan of NL-Alert, because it is very loud when you wear earplugs. We also see on social media that many people do not understand why they cannot coexist. There are even people who say that it is part of the cultural heritage of the Netherlands. It will therefore not surprise us that the government may postpone these plans for a while.
