Against the background of the flood disaster, the question of effective warning systems arises. With the sirens, the situation is confusing, a politician brought extensive SMS into play.
Only part of the population was warned by sirens about the extreme floods in western Germany. This is also due to the fact that in many places there are no or only a few functional sirens. A funding program set up by Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer (CSU) for the countries that are responsible for disaster control in peacetime is planned but not yet implemented.
“Since the spring there have been coordination with the federal states on the funding program for the construction and upgrading of the sirens,” said ministry spokesman Steve Alter on Saturday upon request. The process is on the home stretch.
The federal government had offered the states a total of 88 million euros. However, the federal states have to pay the maintenance costs for the systems themselves. In addition, there is currently no nationwide overview of where warning sirens are and where not.
In a concept for the realignment of the Bonn authority, which Seehofer and BBK President Armin Schuster presented in March, it says: “Regardless of the possibilities that arise from the advancing digitization, the expansion and operation of analog warning media, such as a modern siren network, important. ” Experience over the past few years has shown that sirens, with their wake-up effect, can also quickly and reliably warn parts of the population who do not use other warning devices, such as smartphones.
Alerts by SMS to all?
The hurdle with the latter, such as the NINA warning app, is usually that they have to be actively installed on the phone. In order to get around this, the president of the district assembly, Reinhard Sager, has proposed another solution: warnings by SMS, which would be immediately visible on all mobile phones as soon as a concrete danger threatens. “In the case of major disasters that are looming, this should also be possible on older cell phones and without apps to be installed,” said the chairman of the municipal umbrella organization of the German press agency.
Politicians are generally still too hesitant to answer these questions. The same applies to the importance of measures to adapt to climate change. These should be “approached in a much more fundamental way”. However, this is only possible with “proper municipal funding”.
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