The operation is called “Domino 2022”. Until Thursday, May 19, around the Etang de Berre, a new smartphone alert and information system will be tested, which will inform the population in the event of a major risk. The FR-Alert system has never been tested in France on a real population. For Alain Thirion, the director of Civil Security, this is “an essential step forward compared to the siren”.
The FR-Alert system reaches all smartphones in the endangered area
All telephones in the sector will receive a priority message with an alert notification, an audible signal, even if the network is saturated. It is planned to deploy this technology at the end of June in France, including on I Phones. Receiving this notification does not require prior installation on phones. This system will be activated in the event of a climatic, chemical or terrorist risk. It will be tested from May 17 to 18 in each zone of the Bouches-du-Rhône exercise.
A thousand rescuers every day
The other aspect of Operation Domino is the scale of relief on the area which is full of high-risk industrial sites. It will not be easy to coordinate a thousand rescue workers every day, including 200 foreigners, especially Germans. As its name suggests, the exercise will not focus on a single crisis, but on a “domino effect”, namely a succession of major incidents which expose the infrastructures, the environment and of course the population.