Germany: Nationwide warning test fails in some places

BERLIN (AP) — People in Germany braced themselves for shrieking sirens Thursday morning but instead got deafening silence in many places as the first test of the nationwide warning system in 30 years proved widely a failure and punctured the country's infamous image of efficiency.

The Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance cautioned the public well in advance to be prepared for the test, which employed air-raid sirens, smart phone apps and other alert systems. Teachers were told to tell students what would be happening, and animal welfare groups advised owners on precautions to protect their pets.

But then, widely, nothing.

In some major German cities, like Berlin and Munich, it turned out the sirens had been removed at the end of the Cold War - something known by local authorities but not clarified in the blanket warning. In other cases, the system just didn't work.

Push alerts by the national warning app NINA also arrived late or not at all.

The civil protection office said an initial analysis appeared to indicate too many people were involved in activating the alarm at the same time.

“A number of places put out the alert all at the same time at 11 o'clock, which should not have happened,” the head of the federal agency, Christoph Unger, told news channel n-tv.

“We wanted to issue the warning only at one place, but several did it simultaneously, and that overloaded the system," Unger added.

The agency said it did not want to comment further on the problems so it wasn't immediately clear in how many places across the country the siren didn't go off properly or how many users were affected by the delay of the push alerts.

The German Interior Ministry said later that a “technical problem” caused the failure and would be investigated...