Many Drenthe residents were sitting up in bed at 6:31 am this morning, after the provincial NL-Alert had gone off due to the slippery conditions. But that wasn’t true for everyone in the southern half of the province. Residents of Meppel and parts of Coevorden did not receive the notification. Due to human error, according to the Drenthe Safety Region.
‘Extreme weather conditions in the Northern Netherlands. Stay indoors. Only call 112 in life-threatening situations.’ That warning should also have illuminated the telephone screens in and around Meppel and Coevorden, but did not appear. According to a spokesperson for the Drenthe Safety Region, something went wrong in the control room. “Employees have to draw the area very accurately in the system. That went wrong this time. As a result, not everyone in Drenthe received the notification.”
Where this demarcation used to be coarser, nowadays employees can select areas in great detail. “But that’s exactly what went wrong. The line was simply too north, a human error,” the spokesperson said. “We will take that with us for next time, because this is of course not how it should go. It is important that everyone receives the report in the next incident.”
