You undoubtedly know it: the air raid siren that goes off every first Monday of the month. This will end in 2025. From then on, the well-known siren will be replaced by an NL-Alert. From now on, the telephone notification should alert us in the event of an emergency. A big relief for some, not for others. “A very bad plan.”
It drives him crazy. Right behind the fence of Cor Kluijtmans from Den Bosch is such a mast for the air raid siren. He would rather lose it today than tomorrow. “It’s a terrible thing. And what a hell of a noise too.”
The resident of Den Bosch is therefore happy that the alarm will disappear. “They have been promising for years that it will go away, but it is still there. Here in the middle of the residential area, the sound reverberates in all directions. My grandson recently came to visit and he was terrified. It is a piercing high and shrill sound.”
Jordan Jansen lives a little further away. He is also happy that the air raid siren is going away, although he also sees dangers. “The NL-Alert notifications you now receive are sometimes for small things. That’s why I don’t always take them seriously anymore.”
“Not all elderly people have a cell phone.”
And so there are more concerns. According to outgoing Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgöz, the NL-Alert notifications would have a greater reach. The current sirens would reach approximately 75 percent of Dutch people. The NL-Alert reports 92 percent.
“But not all elderly people have a mobile phone,” says Wilma Schrover, director of the Catholic Association of the Elderly (KBO) in Brabant. According to Schrover, the recognizable sound, which emerged after the Second World War, is something that we will need for a very long time. “If you don’t hear it on the well-known Monday, you just know something is going on.”
The director of the KBO in Brabant sees a solution. “I think you should keep it both. If you don’t have a phone with you, you would be disconnected from emergency signals. Those sirens always work.”
“It’s just every now and then.”
Herwiene van Zuijlen, like Cor and Jordan, lives in the Bazeldonk district in Den Bosch. Unlike her neighbors, she wants the 4,278 sirens that we have in our country to continue to exist. “It’s right next to my house, but it’s never bothered me. It’s only occasionally. I prefer having an alarm than a text message. I don’t always have my phone with me. If it is really necessary, I will be there myself,” jokes Herwiene.
Not all air raid sirens will disappear in 2025. In safety regions where there are high-risk areas, the sirens will remain in place.
