Paris (CNN) – It’s a typical Wednesday lunch in Paris, streets buzzing with tourists, terraces full of tables, when an air raid siren fills the air.
Its moaning tears across the city for about two minutes, reaching a crescent above the afternoon traffic before dying.
Strange incident. But what is still strange is that apart from a few confused tourists, it goes unnoticed.
In France, on the first Wednesday of every month, sirens – initially envisioned as Cold War bombing warnings – rattle as a test of alarm in nearly 2,000 towns and villages across the country.
Today they stand as warnings of natural or industrial disasters, but with war breaking out in the east of Europe, French officials have issued statements to remind the French that the sky-splitting 1 minute 41 second is just an exercise. .
“Certainly if there was a war, we would have seen it in the news or something,” says Ali Karali, a London tourist listening to sirens outside Notre Dame in Paris this month.
“I thought it might be important, but if it happens, people don’t care,” he told CNN.
The surprise isn’t limited to visitors, though.
“It is not uncommon that the prefecture receives calls from individuals, locals or tourists, who are concerned about sirens,” said Matthew Pianze, head of the Interdepartmental Service of Defense and Civil Defense in Yvelines, an area west of Paris. Told.
“Obviously, they are quickly reassured by our team who are equipped with the right tools to respond to their concerns on the first Wednesday of the month.”
a french love story
Sirens were set up throughout France to warn against Cold War bombings after World War II.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
The sirens heard today can be traced back to the Middle Ages. Since that time, it has been the responsibility of the administration to signal any event that may have physically threatened the population.
One of the most common bells used at the time was known as the “toxin”, found in churches and rang by priests to alert the population of danger.
In 1914, bells rang for more than an hour in many cities to alert as many people as possible about the outbreak of World War I.
After World War II, sirens were taken and installed to warn of potential airborne dangers. Their deployment was intensified during the Cold War and they can now be heard throughout France.
In Maison-Lafitte, a town of about 23,000 residents in the western suburbs of Paris, the main mermaid is located on the roof of the town hall. Only the policemen have access to the siren and the town hall staff get the front row seats to its roar.
“It works well, don’t you think?” Deputy mayor Gino Necchi says as soon as the siren sounds.
The way they work is relatively straightforward. “Agents in the province can activate it through an app that’s fairly easy to access,” says Pianezze. “This monthly test allows us to see which of our 47 sirens are ‘sick’ and take them to the doctor. We have to fix them as quickly as possible so they can be prepared in case of a real emergency.” can go.”
An archaic system?
A technician at Maison Laffitte’s town hall, Stephen Mollett, opens a cabinet containing Alert electronics.
CNN
Many have questioned the effectiveness of this decades-old warning system. “France has chosen to have the siren because it has a certain heritage, a tradition behind it,” says Johnny Douvignet, professor of geography at Université d’Avignon.
As an expert in population warning systems, he explains that it was former President Charles de Gaulle who ordered the current system and “despite various changes within the Ministry of the Interior, the priority given to sirens as a means of warning.” has always been maintained till date.”
Not everyone agrees with their usefulness. The sound of sirens is familiar to 92-year-old Jacqueline Bonn, a teenager during World War II. But listening to them regularly “doesn’t affect me,” she says, even if the sound is the same as it was about a century ago.
“It would impress me a lot during the war because they rang every time we were bombed so we could go underground to safety.” Now, she feels they have lost their meaning. “I don’t really see the point anymore,” she says.
But given today’s geopolitical events, Douvinet points out that the return of war on European territory may have refreshed the public’s view of sirens.
“The war in Ukraine has shown that sirens may not be as useless as people used to think,” he says. “One thing is clear, when something happens, people want to be informed and alert.”
After COVID-19 and with major events such as the Rugby World Cup in 2023 and the Olympic Games in 2024, “the council wants to double down on risk and crisis management,” said Yvelins civil defense chief Pianze.
sign of the times
Still, there is growing demand to replace the system, which some say is out of date.
In 2019, a fire broke out at a chemical factory in Rouen, northwestern France, one night and clouds of black smoke covered the city. The sirens were chosen to be used as a secondary warning measure, and to trigger two of them only a few hours after the fire, to warn people after waking up in the morning.
Meanwhile, it was through Twitter and news media that officials chose to communicate.
In an address to the government after the fire, the Prefect of the Normandy Region, Pierre-Andre Durand, said that he thought there was much room for improvement in the system, and that, “we are looking forward to the 21st century with the equipment of the 20th century.” Can’t manage the crisis.”
going digital
The hardware controlling the alert system.
CNN
Durand’s wishes may come true this June as sirens are paired with a new, modern system: France is testing “amber alert”-style cell phone messages.
If effective, they should be launched nationwide by summer. Although similar systems already exist throughout Europe and the Americas, according to Matthew Pianze, the technology is innovative, as it combines cell broadcasting and location-based SMS technologies.
This means that everyone in a given area, regardless of their cell network or phone, will receive an alert from the authorities.
“It could be tourists who are visiting the Yvelins area for example,” Pianezze said.
“Imagine that in the Palace of Versailles, where there are a lot of tourists, they would get all the alerts. And possibly in different languages too.”
This doesn’t mean the end of old school sirens. They are here to stay and will play a more complementary role in cases of emergencies.
“It still allows you to reach fairly large areas,” Pianze says. “You’ve seen the power of the siren and I think it’s very important to be able to keep things already established. I think we’re connected to it because it has an efficiency that’s proven, obviously 100% No, but it is still an efficiency historically associated with the crisis or the war in France.”
Tradition has a special place in France, and sirens are no exception.
So the next time you go to France and you get caught up in the sound of air raids, keep calm and remember that it’s probably just the beginning of the month.