Air-raid sirens to fall silent from 2028 as cabinet cuts funding

The Netherlands will finally switch off its air-raid sirens in 2028 after the government decided not to fund a replacement.

The regular tests of the sirens on the first Monday of every month will stop at the end of next year, justice minister David van Weel said in a letter to parliament.

Although initially installed to warn citizens to take cover from aerial bombing, they have more commonly been used to alert people to threats such as flooding and fires.

Two years ago MPs voted to renew the contract to maintain the existing system for another two years, after the cabinet had announced plans to switch off the network in 2025.

Van Weel said that the “absence of financial means for a new network of sirens” meant the contract would not be extended again. Parliament will have to vote on th decision.

The minister pointed out that 92% of the population can be reached through the NL-Alert alarm on their mobile phones. He said he would consider retaining an alarm system for high-risk areas, such as towns that are prone to flooding.

The network of 4,278 sirens was set up in the 1950s and its spiralling tones have rung out at noon on the first Monday of every month ever since.

The towers were last replaced in 1998. They were last activated in response to rapid river flooding in southern Limburg in 2021 and the release of poisonous chemicals from the Chemelot industrial plant, also in Limburg, in 2019.