This is "an essential technological advance compared to the siren, as important as when we went from the tocsin to the siren", summed up the director general of civil security Alain Thirion.
A new telephone alert system to inform the population in the event of a major crisis (climate, chemical, terrorist risk) will be tested during an exercise of unprecedented scale, called Domino, in the Bouches-du-Rhône. from Monday.
From May 17 to 18, "people in one of the areas determined by the exercise scenario will be able to receive a notification accompanied by a specific sound signal, even if the mobile phone is in silent mode", and this without having previously installed any application on the telephones, warned Alain Thirion.
Never yet tested in France "on a real population", the "FR-Alert" system will eventually make it possible to reach "all telephones in a given territory" via a "priority" message, in the form of an alert notification, which can thwart a possible saturation of the networks, he added.
Operational on all phones, including the iPhone from June 2022, it is intended to be generalized in France.
disaster scenario
The system will be tested during a risk management exercise “of an extraordinary scale”, specified the regional prefect Christophe Mirmand.
From Monday to Friday, around the Etang de Berre, more than 1,000 people will be mobilized every day.
Within the territory targeted by the exercise, which will cover the municipalities of Fos-sur-Mer, Martigues, a municipality hit by a violent fire in August 2020, and Châteauneuf-les-Martigues, 148 schools will be concerned.
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The event “played” the week of May 16 will not be “a monolithic crisis”, specified the prefect, but a “multi-crisis” scheme with a “snowball” or “domino” effect.
The chosen scenario "provides for the occurrence of a major climatic event leading to cascading incidents whose consequences are likely to expose the population, infrastructures and the environment to major risks", details the prefecture in a press kit.
Led and funded by the European Union, the crisis simulation will include 200 foreigners, including Germans, in the presence of a European commissioner.
A first at this level, underlined Admiral Patrick Augier, head of the Marseille firefighters, who recalled that “France regularly leaves to help abroad” while “Europeans often come to reinforce us”.
