Emergency sirens could be pulled from service in two years

The sirens that sound on the first Monday of the month and when there is a disaster, will no longer be used after 2017, the Ministry of Security and Justice confirmed to RTL. "The sirens are no longer of this time", a ministry spokesperson said. From 2018 the government wants to inform citizens of disasters or emergencies only via their mobile phones, using SMS message based NL-Alert and internet based social media and the crisis.nl website. This means that the new emergency notification system is completely dependent on the Netherlands' telecom infrastructure. The existing system with the siren polls dates from 1992 and consists of 4283 sirens. The system costs nearly 4 million euros a year to maintain. The poles' maintenance contract ends late in 2017.