Don't panic, this is only a test - at least, it should be!
It's standard procedure here to test the national emergency alarm system on the first Monday of the month at 12 noon local time. Unfortunately, yesterday's test didn't do much to boost confidence in the ability of the authorities to warn citizens of an impending emergency. In Rotterdam, they "forgot" to set the alarm, but some bright spark decided they would still run the test, but at 12.15. Result: lots of phone calls from "alarmed" members of the public. In the province of Utrecht, they also heard nothing at 12 noon, but it wasn't human error: the system simply failed to work. In Hilversum, I don't recall hearing anything either, so I'm not sure whether ours worked or not. Of course, the great and the good will have been told before the rest of us, so they'll already have had time to move to secure quarters before the rest of us get an inkling that something's wrong. The whole thing would be funny if it wasn't so serious.
7:44:52 PM 
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