Almost two months after the nationwide warning day, the NRW Ministry of the Interior took stock. “We successfully roused the people in North Rhine-Westphalia on March 9. That worked well,” said NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) when asked by dpa. The technology was reliable. “Nevertheless, we never tire of practicing again and expanding the warning devices. In an emergency, people must be familiar with the subject of warnings.”
During the state-wide test alarm, 6,000 sirens should howl in North Rhine-Westphalia. In fact, 91 percent would have triggered on the warning day. The siren network is still in an expansion and transition phase in NRW, it said.
After the nationwide test alarm last December, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia triggered the cell broadcast warning system for the first time. As a result, the warning message was also transmitted to media, warning apps, and the passenger information system of Deutsche Bahn and digital city information systems.
About 75 percent of the municipalities also posted information about the warning day on the municipal website or the website of the fire brigade or disseminated the test warning. Around half of the municipalities actively posted the test warning message on social media on the day of the warning.
An evaluation of cell broadcast is technically not possible because this system does not have a return channel to be able to carry out an empirical evaluation. However, there were no technical problems with the transmission of the warning message via the mobile phone network to the end devices.
According to the state government, the expanded mix of warning instruments reached more people than previous test alarms. The nationwide warning day will take place on September 14th, in which NRW will take part again.
