On July 23, the session of the Lviv City Council approved the allocation of funds from the city budget for the purchase of new autonomous sirens that can operate in the absence of electricity for 72 hours.
The cost of one of these sirens starts at UAH 200,000, so they plan to buy 10 of them.
The sirens will be purchased as part of the city’s program to improve and develop the local automated system for centralized public warning of the Lviv city territorial community.
“Our city has been implementing a program to replace old electromechanical sirens with modern electronic ones for 4 years. We buy new systems every year, but now, in a situation where we have faced an acute problem over the past two months due to long periods of power outages, we have to respond quickly. That’s why we asked for additional funds – UAH 2 million for the purchase of new electronic sirens – to install them where there is the largest concentration of electromechanical sirens, which cannot deliver alarm signals in the absence of electricity. The cost of new sirens starts from 200 thousand hryvnias, so it will be approximately 10 such units of modern electronic sirens, we hope.
In the next two months, we will purchase and install them, first of all in those areas where there is the largest concentration of old systems, so that those areas can hear alarms during a long outage. After all, such modern sirens have a 72-hour battery life, which means that during this time people will be alerted even in the absence of electricity,” said Natalia Alekseeva, manager of the executive committee of the Lviv City Council.
As a reminder, Lviv community has 290 sets of centralized alert systems. Among them:
– 36 self-powered sirens that operate without main power for 72 hours;
– 152 sirens that can be triggered once without power;
– 81 electromechanical sirens without backup power;
– 21 sirens are located in the annexed communities.
Due to the damage to Ukraine’s power grid during the Russian attacks, the number of siren malfunctions in Lviv ATC increased. For example, from July 4, 23:43, to July 5, 00:30, 71 sirens failed to work: due to a failure in the centralized warning system (LOVA server for 48 sirens) and a power outage due to hourly power outages (23 sirens).
During scheduled and emergency power outages, 23 to 30 sirens are out of service every day. The Lviv City Council is working to modernize the system and duplicate the sirens with backup power.
In the meantime, residents are advised to download official alert apps such as Civil Defense Alert, Air Alert, Air Alert, or tune their FM receiver to 88.2 MHz (Radio Pershne) or 100.8 MHz (Radio Lvivska Hvilya).