You've all been there: you live next door to a chemical plant and one day there is a leak. Or what about the day the dykes break and your town gets flooded. The fire in the tyre factory. In the Netherlands we have a general warning system that will sound if any of these or other serious things happen.
Several years ago I had my house renovated: the windows were out, in fact the whole front of the house was open, when the alarm went. And kept on going. The main advice when the alarm goes off? Stay inside, close windows and doors and turn on the local television or radio. Yes, right!
Anyway, those alarms are not just there to be sounded once in a blue moon. They are actually sounded every single month (unless there is a (religious) holiday on the same day). Everybody knows: 12 noon on Monday it's alarm time. You hear it, you may even register it, but it doesn't do anything else. Until the alarm is sounded on any other day or time. That's when you take notice.
Last week I was on a lovely walk. It was quiet. It was peaceful. Until the alarm went off. The first Monday of the month, noon. So, if you ever come to the Netherlands and the alarm goes off: check! What's the time, what's the day?
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteThat's a bit too much like air raid sirens to me!!! Still, a good purpose... however, one wonders, what happens on that one fateful day when disaster strikes at midday Monday??? There would have to be a secondary sound quite different which signalled 'this is not a drill'... (oh the sci-fi geek's mind is racing...) YAM xx
If an emergency should happen at exactly midday on the first Monday of the month (what are the odds of that happening), the siren would just continue. Plus, there is also the mobile phone network that would kick in and sound and sound and sound, which is a nasty sound all of its own.
DeleteThe siren would only be turned off once the emergency was over.
It would be hard not to notice that.
ReplyDeleteI knew it was coming and I jumped anyway. That is quite shrill and would for certain get one's attention. You had a pretty day to be out though. I loved the magnificent Ms. O's photo yesterday. I saw a pink tongue in the first photo.
ReplyDeleteHugs Cecilia
That's an interesting sounding siren. There is a nuclear power plant that our house is just inside the "danger" zone of and twice a year on a Tuesday around 10am a siren test is done. Now that we're retired we are almost always home when it happens. I always check the internet to make sure it is really just a test (the local news channels usually have a story about it) since you never know if it's real or not.
ReplyDeleteWe had that too in Germany but not for too long the people were still traumatized and left everything to hid in the next basement, to they stopped but in Belgium when we arrived thre was still the alarm. My poor mother ran in the basement to hide which made me laugh. Today I understand more of course and the alarms ae stopped too.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. I'll have to remember that if I ever get to the Netherlands!
ReplyDelete