Siren test is repeated
A technical malfunction occurred during the siren test at the beginning of February. The Federal Office for Civil Protection writes that troubleshooting measures have been initiated. The siren test will be repeated.
The siren test of February 7, 2018 was only partially successful. In the central system for controlling the sirens, a technical failure occurred. According to the Federal Office for Civil Protection (Babs), those responsible, together with the external operator of the system, immediately took measures to make the system stable and functional again as quickly as possible. Since the evening of the siren test, the system has been running again in normal operating mode. From this point on, the remote-controlled triggering of the sirens is in principle possible again throughout Switzerland. Irrespective of the technical malfunction of the control system, manual activation of the sirens is also guaranteed at all times.
Cause of the malfunction identified
According to Babs, the system operator has comprehensively investigated the cause of the malfunction, and the cause of the problem has been identified: It was a software error that led to a disruption in the exchange of data between the central Polyalert database and the corresponding application servers. This enabled the necessary measures to be defined in order to rectify the error. The work is currently being implemented with high priority and urgency, according to the Babs media release.
Repetition in the first half of 2018
As soon as the corrective measures have been implemented, the functionality of the system will be tested comprehensively and at various levels. In cooperation with the cantons, the Federal Office plans to repeat the nationwide siren test with real activation of the sirens in the first half of 2018. In principle, all sirens will be triggered: those for the general alarm and those for the water alarm.
Source: Federal Office for Civil Protection
