Emergency alerts to your phone

[TheFirstOfHerName]

From April, the government will be able to send emergency alerts to our mobile phones.

www.gov.uk/alerts

A siren will go off, even if your phone is on silent. You won't be able to do anything else on your phone until you turn it off. They plan to test this on 23 April.

I understand the reasons why this can be helpful, and in areas where people need to suddenly evacuate due to wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes etc it could save lives.

However, personally I don't want it, and have disabled it on my phone.

1. Of the emergencies I might experience, I'm not sure I'd want to be alerted to any of them via this method. If a flood or storm is imminent, I'll find out through the usual channels. If a nuclear missile is heading my way, having a few minutes' warning will not help.

1. This system is being run / overseen by the UK government, and my trust in them has been somewhat eroded over the past few years.

1. I have an anxiety disorder (reasonably well managed with combination of medication and other methods) and I think the cost to my anxiety levels of having my phone suddenly sirenning at me outweighs the negligible probability of this system saving my life.

If you are the kind of calm, resilient person who could have these alarms going off and it not completely throw you, then great.

Why the dramatic alarm and not just a text message?

Presumably for the same reason that sirens and fire alarms are loud and impossible to ignore, to alert people.

Boscastle flooded in a couple of hours in 2006 when there was a torrential rainstorm, some buildings were swept away. If it had happened at night / early hours of the morning like the Lynmouth floods in the 1950s there could have been a loss of life. An early warning system would be very useful in that scenario.

And just because you live up a hill doesn't mean you are immune to things that are a danger to you. As an ex emergency planner I can think of quite a few things that could pose a threat. Railway / road transport accidents involving vehicles carrying dangerous goods , chemical spills/ fires in waste recycling centres/ gunmen on the loose.....

Oh, you sweet, summer child.

😂 I was being a bit ironic tbh.

Yeh not sure text is that effective

Whereas I would get up out of my bed and look if I was told that a child was in danger somewhere close by.

So at least still beneficial despite the odd mind-boggling selfish person.

And just because you live up a hill doesn't mean you are immune to things that are a danger to you. As an ex emergency planner I can think of quite a few things that could pose a threat. Railway / road transport accidents involving vehicles carrying dangerous goods , chemical spills/ fires in waste recycling centres/ gunmen on the loose...

Any of those scenarios are so unlikely here that if they did happen, by the time the alert was sent out the entire village would already know about it.

I hope this hasn’t cost a lot of public money because it really isn’t necessary and there are far more worthy causes that are currently cash-strapped.

@TheFirstOfHerName how do you disable it? I have heart palpitations if the doorbell goes off or people are loud outside- this would definitely be problematic for me!

Is there a way of getting the warning message without the siren noise? I’m fine with being told stuff I just HATE noise.

I've just gone in to settings & turned everything off, my phone is a Samsung s21 Ultra so 2 years old.

It's a good idea for missing children. But anyone who checks the weather isn't going to learn anything new.

If a house nearby was on fire couldn’t you smell it? Hear the fire engines? Weren’t all your neighbours out in the street watching?! Nothing can happen here without every bugger knowing about it.

Havent read whole thread yet but what an excellent way to put someone in danger when an abusive partner is alerted to a secret phone that they have.

Four minutes would be enough to tell anyone who mattered that you loved them.

Also had one a couple of days ago that there was a car accident and to keep out of the way of the ambulances and fire truck and to go a different way if possible.

So we're driving along and a loud, high pitched siren goes off to alert us to this. It's illegal to look at our phone or press any buttons but we're supposed to drive to a safe place to pull over immediately to read the instructions. I'm on the disk carriageway and a layby big enough for two cars is already full, as is the next one.

Or as already happens, some of us use Google maps. A little icon comes up to warn us of an accident ahead and if it's able to, the app reroutes us so that we avoid it.

@PlateBilledDuckyPerson
No, it won't - they only work on i-phone or Android phones on 4 or 5g.

Thanks for answering my question

Back in the early '90s, we had the police helicopter flying low over the area with some speaker announcements about a young girl who'd gone missing. We were asked to check any sheds, outbuildings etc and so on.

I dutifully did as asked, and people went up on to the downs that are just one street away and searched, and in the nearby woods and chalkpits, and similar was happening all over town.

The girl was found very quickly, safe and sound. She'd gone to visit her nan, and her nan had taken her into town to do some shopping. The child had told her nan that her mum had sent her round!

The police got a load of flack for being too quick to get the chopper up, and a new protocol for using it was put in place shortly afterwards.

Does anyone else have a Samsung Galaxy A20E Id like to opt out

I think fires are one of the emergencies this could be a really good system for. Lots of people are remarkably unaware about fires. It can be hard for emergency services to get everyone who needs to be informed, especially at night and in blocks of flats. In urban areas people become inured to sirens and in rural areas it can take a while for the fire brigade to get there, so spread could already significant before people are alerted.

Alarms, judiciously used, that give people accurate information and tell them what to do could be life saving in this situation.

I've lived in two countries with this system. In both, inititally its been two or three a year, and generally for big weather events. But then, in both, they haven't sent out a warning about a big storm or flood as it was under-predicted, people have died, and they've taken a ton of flak for not using the system. So they've then gone over the top with warnings all the bloody time; my favourite ones being about possible fires when there was snow on the ground.

They can also be quite sketchy on location depending on how many masts there are. Probably better in the UK as population density is higher but dunno. We quite frequently got alerts for bears around with the location stated as 50 to 60 miles away; not really a threat I need to wake up for!

And yes, if they go off when you're driving, and you have your phone linked to your Bluetooth, it will sound like the end of the world unless you override this in your settings.

I have problem with this at all. Although I recommend you all have a brief chat about it with your phone owning kids.

That should be I have NO problem with this at all

So you have an anxiety disorder and you wouldn't want any notification of an earthquake or a hurricane or flooding you'd rather be swept away?????
Totally contradicts the whole point of it!

How do you turn it off?