Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) - sirens howl, mobile phones shrill: On the nationwide warning day, it also got loud in North Rhine-Westphalia at 11 a.m. on Thursday. The warning was triggered by the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) in Bonn. For the first time, a warning was broadcast via mobile phones via the cell broadcast system.
The control center of the Cologne fire brigade then received emergency calls from concerned citizens who received a cell broadcast warning on their mobile phones for the first time. Anyone who installed warning apps such as Nina or Katwarn on their smartphone also received a notification of the test warning in this way. Radio and television stations were also involved in the test alarm.
With the nationwide warning day, the authority wants to find out how many people a warning of dangers would reach in an emergency. The Federal Office asked citizens about their experiences with the test warnings in an online survey.
With the cell broadcast method, an automatic notification is sent to every mobile phone that is switched on at the time, has reception and is running the latest software.
The evaluation takes place at the municipal and federal level and takes time, according to the NRW Ministry of the Interior. A lot went wrong on the first nationwide warning day on September 10, 2020. Among other things, the message from the warning apps Nina and Katwarn only arrived on the smartphones a good half hour late. The Federal Ministry of the Interior had therefore described the test alarm as "failed".
NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) had announced before the warning day that the flood disaster in summer 2021 had shown how important a functioning warning system was. At that time, many people in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate were not warned in good time of the approaching water masses. According to the Ministry of the Interior, there are now almost 5,700 sirens in NRW - in 2017 there were around 4,200.
