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Volunteer firefighters fighting a forest fire in Saxony
Photo: Robert Michael / dpa
Floods, forest fires, heat storms - there will always be disasters in Germany.
The Greens Katharina Schulze and Leon Eckert have now drawn up a "ten-point warning plan" that is intended to warn the population in future emergencies in a timely, reliable and understandable manner, as independently as possible from electricity.
The plan, which is available to the dpa news agency, says: "The decision made in 2019 by the conference of interior ministers for uniform siren signals in an emergency was a minimum consensus and has not yet been fully implemented."
In the medium term, the use of sirens to alert the fire brigade, which is common in some places, should be abolished.
The siren signals for warning, all-clear and tests as well as the date of siren tests should be standardized across Germany.
From the point of view of the two Green politicians, another weak point is that many sirens, but also other warning devices, are dependent on electricity.
However, it can fail during a natural disaster or as a result of a hacker attack.
Eckert and Schulze demand that warning devices should therefore be designed with immediate effect in such a way that they are energy-efficient and continue to function even when there is little availability of electricity or in the event of a complete failure.
“In Germany, we also have to think about a blackout and increase battery buffering for all relevant warning devices,” demanded Eckert, rapporteur for the Greens faction for civil protection.
The federal siren support program launched in 2021 provides as a minimum requirement that a siren must have a battery that ensures that it can still issue four warnings and four all-clears after a power failure.
»Warning day full of defects«
According to the Basic Law, the federal states are responsible for civil protection.
The federal government is responsible for protecting the population in the event of war or tension.
Some experts consider this separation to be outdated.
On December 8th there is to be a nationwide warning day, where the various warning channels will be tested - this also includes the cell broadcast system for the first time, in which all mobile phone users who are in the area of a radio cell at a certain time will receive a message which looks like an SMS.
Unlike the warning apps Nina and Katwarn, this also reaches people who do not use a smartphone.
Also with a view to the problems with warning the population during the flood disaster in western Germany in the summer of 2021, Eckert said: »If the expansion of the warning infrastructure continues at this slow pace, we will experience a warning day full of deficiencies and in a real disaster not all people will again can warn."
mrc/dpa
