A large majority of Germans consider sirens to be a suitable means of warning people of disasters. Almost 87 percent of the participants in the survey answered “yes”.
Berlin – A large majority of Germans consider sirens to be a suitable means of warning people of disasters. This is shown by the results of a survey by the opinion research institute YouGov on behalf of the German Press Agency.
When asked whether it makes sense to use sirens to warn the population of floods, forest fires and other acute dangers, almost 87 percent of the participants in the survey answered “yes”. Only seven percent of Germans do not consider the use of sirens to be sensible for this purpose. Six percent of those surveyed did not have a clear opinion on this.
Only part of the population was warned by sirens about the extreme floods in western Germany, which killed more than 180 people. This is partly due to the fact that in many places there are no or only a few functional sirens. Some countries considered them superfluous after the end of the Cold War and have for some time been relying exclusively on warnings via app, via the media and on display boards in the urban area.
An important part of the warning infrastructure
However, the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) and Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) see sirens as an important part of the warning infrastructure. A few months ago, the federal government therefore set up a funding program worth 88 million euros. Its purpose is to support the countries that are responsible for disaster control in peacetime in improving old sirens and building new ones.
Older sirens would no longer work in the event of a power failure, but modern units equipped with a battery will. Always provided they are set up in a place where they are safe even in storms and floods. One point of criticism that is often heard in the debate about the advantages and disadvantages of warnings by siren is that when the siren howls, the residents still do not know what to do. A test with so-called intelligent sirens is currently running in Kaiserslautern. These are sirens that can also be used to make announcements. dpa
