"We definitely need to test the entire system again this year – all the elements we tested in May: Sirens, SMS messages, app notifications, and notifications transmitted via ERR," Rescue Board emergency alert head Argo Kerb told "Aktuaalne kaamera."

Estonia's first emergency alert test in May exposed a number of shortcomings – warning messages to the phone got delayed, and the 1247 national information line was unobtainable. Of the 121 sirens designated, only 70 activated without issues, and only now are the reasons behind this better understood – mostly that chips used in the sirens need replacing.

Siim Türnpuu, head of business services at the IT and Development Center of the Ministry of the Interior (SMIT), said of the sirens: "The majority of them – 47 out of 121 posts – had problems with control modules. The microchips in these control modules date back to the Covid pandemic. As we know, there were supply and quality issues with microchips then too. Now the manufacturers have started replacing them, and we will replace them at all [siren] posts."
All the deficiencies are planned to be resolved over the summer.

The test also showed that the national information phone system was not prepared for such high volume, and the emergency center also drew lessons from the drill.

Emergency center crisis manager Janek Murakas said: "We certainly did not expect that between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., during the time of the test, the number of calls would increase sixteen-fold."

Simultaneously, the Ministry of the Interior is developing a new system which would enable messages to reach people quickly and on a mass scale. For this, cell broadcast tech is to be used, which allows emergency messages to be delivered in just a few seconds.

Ministry of the Interior advisor Kadi Luht-Kallas said: "Your mobile phone will start making a siren sound then the notification text will automatically appear on the screen. Of course, the concern – also the most talked about globally – is that the text tends to disappear from the screen immediately, once the screen is touched accidentally."

The Rescue Board estimates that emergency tests of this kind could be conducted two to four times a year, subject to amendments to the Emergency Act currently under discussion at the Riigikogu. That law change is expected to come into force next summer.

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