Poland trains civilians in air raid response as warning siren network reaches 10,000 units
Firefighters trained civilians across Pomerania and Mazovia on Saturday as Poland accelerated the rollout of a unified alert network and emergency application.
Regional emergency drills
On Saturday, 3 October 2026, the State Fire Service and Volunteer Fire Brigades conducted civilian response training across more than 560 rescue stations, firehouses, and educational points throughout the Pomeranian and Mazovian voivodeships. The sessions ran between 11:00 and 14:00 under the Civil Protection and Civil Defence Academy initiative, organized in coordination with the Pomeranian voivode and municipal crisis management units. Firefighters instructed residents on identifying air attack alarm signals, interpreting Government Security Centre alerts, assembling emergency evacuation backpacks, using official safety guides, and finding regional shelters. In Pomerania, drills spanned roughly 200 locations, ranging from rural fire stations to high-footfall urban venues including Forum Gdańsk.
Siren network integration
The regional exercises took place alongside a national modernization of Poland's alert infrastructure overseen by the State Fire Service and the Ministry of the Interior and Administration. The central government has expanded single-button remote activation capacity from an initial base of several hundred sirens to more than 10,000 units nationwide. Emergency planners intend to integrate all 20,000 existing sirens across Poland into the centralized system, with a long-term goal of surpassing 30,000 connected sirens. In the Pomeranian region, 660 sirens are currently linked, with installations scheduled to exceed 1,000 by the end of 2026.
We are building a warning and alerting system in which we integrate sirens and introduce new applications to manage this system. We are really at a very advanced level. I am convinced that by the end of the year the system will work very efficiently across the entire country.
- Single-button active (October 2026)
- 10000 sirens
- Existing sirens target
- 20000 sirens
- Total national goal
- 30000 sirens
Mobile alert application testing
In addition to acoustic sirens, the interior ministry is developing a specialized emergency warning application for mobile devices. Software coding for the application is finished, and the ministry initiated cross-departmental testing during the first week of October. The testing phase incorporates specialists from the military, the Ministry of Digital Affairs, partner governmental bodies, and youth fire brigades to evaluate system performance. The final application will be available as a free download in mobile app stores upon its scheduled public rollout in December 2026.
- Civil defence training held across 560 stations in Pomerania and Mazovia.
- Advanced cross-sector software testing begins for emergency warning mobile app.
- Public release of free emergency warning mobile application.
- Pomeranian siren network expands to over 1,000 integrated units.
Strategic context and civic readiness
Minister of the Interior and Administration Marcin Kierwiński participated in the Gdańsk exercises, arguing that practical readiness must become standard public behaviour. Kierwiński framed the civil defence push around regional security risks stemming from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and broader regional tensions.
We live in dangerous times. Many new threats, many new dangers. All of this is connected to the war across our eastern border and revived Russian imperialism. So we must be ready. When danger comes, there will often be no time to hesitate for long.
The exercises across Pomerania and Mazovia represent part of an ongoing cycle of regional civil defence training sessions planned across other Polish voivodeships.
