Magdeburg (dpa/sa) – Saxony-Anhalt wants to trigger a large test alarm at the beginning of December. “The authorities and emergency services involved are testing a wide variety of warning multipliers and communication channels such as radio and television, digital city display boards and warning apps,” said a spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Interior on Thursday. For the first time, the warning should be possible via “cell broadcast”. A test message is sent to cell phones and smartphones via the cell phone network.
It is important to prepare for emergencies and disasters, said Interior Minister Tamara Zieschang (CDU). Exercises like the warning day showed “whether and how we can alert everyone”. The warning day 2020 had revealed gaps in alerting the population in Saxony-Anhalt as well as in other parts of Germany. The Ministry of the Interior announced at the time that the test alarm was obviously displayed with a time delay in apps and in the NINA warning system. Some countries then pushed for the sirens to be reactivated as a classic warning signal.
The nationwide warning day was exceptionally postponed from September 8th to December 8th this year in order to test “cell broadcast” for the first time on the nationwide warning day 2022 and to gain important insights for further implementation.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, the siren network is currently being expanded in Saxony-Anhalt. The federal government is supporting this with around 2.4 million euros. In Saxony-Anhalt, around 220 sirens could be funded according to the funding amounts specified by the federal government.