The warning day began on Thursday at 10.59 a.m. with a shrill warning tone on numerous mobile phones.

This probably reached half of all mobile phones in Germany - as long as they were switched on.

Monica Ganster

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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"Test warning - nationwide warning day 2022" appeared as a message on the displays and above all the information that there was no danger.

This was the first time that the nationwide information system Cell Broadcast was successfully tested, with which large parts of the population can be reached in an emergency even if the network fails.

However, cell broadcast can only reach newer mobile phones, a list is published by the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK).

Shortly after 11 a.m., however, a second limitation became clear: the newer cell phones also have to be updated regularly.

If you didn't install the current operating system, you didn't get a message or a warning tone.

After the most recent update, a “Cell Broadcast Alerts” section appears in the iPhone settings under Notifications at the bottom of the page.

Anyone who wants to support the BBK in evaluating the test alarm and reporting any missing messages can take part in a survey.

Cell Broadcast is now scheduled to enter the testing phase and be ready for use by spring 2023.

Apps mostly worked

The Hessenwarn and Katwarn and NINA apps also worked largely as expected, sending notifications and an unpleasant tone to all phones that had previously downloaded one of the apps and were turned on.

The all-clear should follow after three quarters of an hour – however, this apparently only worked via the Katwarn app.

The BBK also did not send the all-clear signal via cell broadcast.

According to heise.de, the Federal Office's server was temporarily overloaded.

Attention was also drawn to the test alarm on the radio.

A lot went wrong on the first nationwide warning day on September 10, 2020.

Among other things, the message from the warning apps Nina and Katwarn only arrived on the smartphones a good half hour late.

If it had actually been an emergency, many citizens would not have noticed.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior had therefore described the test alarm as "failed".

Sirens, on the other hand, are being used less and less across the country.

They have been dismantled more and more over the past decades because they were hardly used anymore.

Their importance changed with the flood disaster in the Ahr valley, when many people could not be warned about the water masses in time, and the war in Ukraine.

Successful siren signals were reported from Hanau, Hofheim, Eltville and Frankfurt-Höchst, although not always so loud that they would have attracted unannounced attention.

In Frankfurt, however, there are currently only two factory locations, at Allessa in Fechenheim and in the industrial park in Höchst.

They reliably alerted the surrounding districts of Unterliederbach, Sindlingen and Zeilsheim, the western areas of Nied and Schwanheim as well as Bergen-Enkheim, Riederwald and Seckbach shortly after 11 a.m. and gave the all-clear again at 11.47 a.m. with a one-minute continuous tone.

A template from the Frankfurt fire brigade, according to which 150 sirens are needed for the city area to be on alert, has been with the magistrate for five years.

Its processing was last postponed by the Roman parties in February 2022, a few weeks before the start of the Ukraine war, due to the lack of urgency.