[jacquesm]

> demonstrably mis-handled in several critical ways.

- No fall-back system in place.

- Alternative alert system did not work.

- Alternative alert went out with the wrong information.

That seems plenty to me.

As far as the siren is concerned: the general alert system is meant for serious threats to public safety, it does not require 'a new phone number in morse', the output is a single bit: siren on: stay indoors, close doors and windows, wait for all clear sign (three short bursts on the siren).

[apexalpha]

But the last two are not KPNs fault. They don't handle the NL alert at all, that's the government.

Also: there was literally no reason at all to stay inside. Sounding the national airhorn alarm because 112 is unreachable is a horrible decision.

[jacquesm]

> But the last two are not KPNs fault.

Agreed, but 112 not being reachable definitely is. KPN made a big stink about it at the time how other 'crappy' providers could not be trusted to deliver a thing of such national importance and so they got to do it exclusively rather than to have multiple redundant systems by different providers. I'm sure there will be some second guessing of that decision now.

Agreed that sounding the national alarm over this would be an overreaction, as is the fact that they used the national alert, lots of people are going to disable it as a result of this and that will make the system that much less valuable.

[apexalpha]

Glad you agree now. Your comments yesterday make it seem you were quite stressed out from all of it.

[jacquesm]

No, I just think that if the national alert system is activated that it should work as advertised, deliver each alert once and that everybody should receive it.

As it was some people got no alerts, others got nine and the information dispensed through it was faulty. That's pretty fucked up.

[techcode]

I'm not so sure about always "stay indoors" part - in particular in case the dams leak and half of the country is about to be under water.

I guess depends on the height of your house - though in quite a few places even rooftop might be below or close to sea level.

[jacquesm]

Those are pretty far down on the likelihood scale, though we have had instances of that, especially near river dikes in the last couple of years. We do not have a lot of dams here.

The more likely cause for such an alarm is chemical pollution from either an accidental release or a fire. Their old use was for air raids but those are even more unlikely (at the moment, of course this can change).

[sverhagen]

The actual instruction from the government is:

* Go inside

* Close doors and windows

* Listen to the emergency channel

* Know when it is safe to go outside again

Sirens are sunsetting, but still operational until 2020.