German district deliberately switched off flood warning sirens
As t-online noted: “The sirens did not go off for a reason. […] If we had triggered the sirens while the media wasn’t reporting, everyone would have called 112.” It was feared that the inquiries would paralyze the emergency number. The siren alarm can “only be triggered hand in hand with media coverage,” explained an official, referring to the late and much criticized reporting by WDR on the night of the flood. “Otherwise the alarm would cause panic.”
As a further reason for the lack of sounding the alarm, the official admitted: “Nobody expected it to take on such proportions.” Thus the sirens were deliberately not triggered to avoid panic among the population.
But arguably, people need to “panic” to flee for their own safety. Or would they rather have people drown “calmly”?
Usually journalists criticize politicians, but at the federal press conference politicians were furious because Germans on social media had dared to criticize the fact that the government was poorly prepared after the flood disaster and they had no answer to important questions about the safety of citizens.
But anyone who has a highly paid spokesman post in a federal ministry and appears in front of the press, must expect some criticism. Instead, they appeared to blame the media for not covering up their mistakes enough.
Notably, there were no differences between the main political actors at the press conference with Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) in Berlin. Above all, the SPD candidate for chancellor never left any doubts as to what the cause of the floods were: It was “obviously a consequence of man-made climate change”.
Scholz then made a corresponding demand: “We have to stop man-made climate change!” It remains an open question as to how one country, Germany, would act to stop what they described as a global problem, but no media representatives present were curious to know that.
- Source : FWM Staff
