Every first Wednesday of the month, a mermaid sounds everywhere in France. This year, she will change her schedule for many departments.
Every first Wednesday of the month, sirens sound throughout France and surprise part of the population: it is the alert and information system to populations (SAIP). Monthly, this alarm is tested for a minute and forty -one in order to control its proper functioning throughout the territory. In real situations, it alerts the inhabitants in the event of a natural, industrial or attack. If the alarm begins to ring, apart from the test, the Ministry of the Interior indicates that it is necessary to “adopt a reflex behavior in order to put itself in safety and facilitate the action of the emergency services. By default, you must join a building in order to protect yourself and learn about the exact nature of the crisis”.
The test alarm does not sound at the same time everywhere in France. In the North, the sirens resonate at 11:45 am on the first Wednesday of the month, while in the center, it is 12 noon and in the south, it is 12:15 pm. It hasn’t always been like this. Until 2018, the time was set at 12 noon everywhere in France, but a software change had caused these offbeat schedules.
However, a reverse is underway, reveals Actu.fr. A new change of software will unify and modernize the system at the national level. The sirens will be able to be triggered all at the same time at the same time. “Many of these sirens come from the Cold War, some are even older. With the modernization of the park, we introduce computers on these mermaids which were very mechanical, with a button to be triggered manually,” said Nicolas Regny, of the General Directorate of Civil Security and Crisis Management. The objective is to centralize alerts at 12 noon, a change for the departments of the North and South.
This unique schedule will be set up once all the sirens have been modernized, is probably during the year. Aside from the departments of the Grand Est, Burgundy, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, New Aquitaine, and Var, which already have an alert at 12 noon, the Sirène will therefore soon change schedules in all the other departments of France!
Some departments have already started changes. This is the case in the Côtes-d’Armor as explained by the prefecture in a press release : “As part of a new feature, the monthly test of Sirens Saip, previously scheduled at 11:45 am, will be carried out at 12:00 from Wednesday March 5, 2025 for the whole department”.
However, this change did not go as planned, as reported Ouest-France. The alert siren lasted longer than usual on March 5 in Lamballe-Armor and Saint-Brieuc. “The national warning signal was issued instead of the test signal”, recognizing “an adjustment error following a new internal device”. In the event of a real danger, the alarm rings three times, with five seconds of break between each, before a continuous sound of 30 seconds at the end. Adjustments are therefore still much necessary.