For the first time after a sobering rehearsal breakdown in autumn 2020, Bavaria tested its civil protection warning system on Thursday. The sirens wailed nationwide at eleven o’clock, and corresponding information appeared on the warning apps Katwarn and Nina. During a visit to the Nuremberg fire brigade, Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) called on the municipalities to buy more sirens again.
The test alarm was originally planned for March, but was postponed because of the Ukraine war that had just begun. Despite modern electronic possibilities, there is no more effective means, especially for night-time alarms, said Herrmann. “If something happens at two o’clock in the morning, nobody notices that the warning app on their cell phone starts accordingly,” said Herrmann. The minister said that the possibility of waking people up at night is needed.
In this context, he welcomed a new system of push SMS that everyone gets on their cell phones. This is still in its infancy in Germany, after all legal hurdles have been cleared.
99 sirens in Nuremberg, zero in Munich
When it comes to sirens, however, Bavaria is like a patchwork quilt. While 99 sirens went off in Nuremberg on Thursday, not a single one wailed in Munich. The situation in rural areas is also very different, Herrmann admitted. Overall, only half of the sirens actually required are currently available.
How successful the test was can only be said in a few days. He hopes that a nationwide test alarm will take place again in the fall. There is currently a lack of money for the reconstruction of the siren system, which was considered obsolete years ago and has now been rediscovered. In Bavaria between 130 and 200 million euros are necessary, said Herrmann. From the previous federal funding, however, only 13.4 million euros are currently available for Bavaria and 88 million euros for the whole of Germany.
The need is great, but hundreds of applications are not processed
The states want to ask the federal government to expand a corresponding funding program. The federal government launched a funding program two years ago. In Bavaria, however, this is already overstated. “We cannot issue any further decisions at the moment because the money that the federal government is providing for Bavaria has already been exhausted,” said Herrmann. “We currently have hundreds of applications from Bavarian municipalities that cannot be approved at the moment.” In addition, there are supply chain problems among the manufacturers, which means that technology that has already been ordered is not delivered on time.
A year and a half ago, significant deficiencies in the information chain became clear during a joint warning day by the federal and state governments. One of the conclusions was that the apps, which did not function smoothly at the time, cannot be an adequate replacement for a comprehensive siren system. For this reason, the reconstruction of the warning devices, which have already been largely switched off, is being pushed ahead.