Another testing of National Alert

[MollyButton]

AIBU to ask if people are aware: Apparently there is another test of the national Alert system happening in September. It’s crucial that people are aware it will happen especially those with some disabilities or in DV situations.
https://www.itv.com/news/2025-07-07/emergency-alert-to-hit-mobile-phones-in-national-test-heres-what-to-expect?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwLZMCVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHiAMlc8Hi8ZwEEpQytAAAehtyAe2NI34brKfl6iK0bVHV_C09yg-CR3DXf8f_aem_Z9muBhLduhdVxHRtvfwqYw

Please see my above post. Not at all redundant. They can be nation wide or local. Warnings of flash floods, land slides, and depending on where you are tsunamis, earthquakes or terrorist attacks.

relying on people who just happen to be looking up the news is clearly not the same as a directed alert sent to all of as many people as possible. When seconds count.

Other countries have had this system for years, introduce it to this country and some people fall apart or proudly announce they are going deactivate the alert on their phone.

I haven't got a smart phone so won't receive it anyway.

😂🙄😂 grow up!

I was somewhere it is used during extreme weather. It also meant that employers could fuck off because state issues an indesputable weather warning and stay home warning (some still didn't 🙄 but most did!) at 5am. That was quite a wake up!

Tbh not sure it would work with flash flood. They are called flash for a reason sadly

Even more astounding just days after a weather event killed over a hundred people, many of them children, where its pretty obvious a lack of an alert system contributed to the scale of the tragedy

Anyone seeing the tragedy unfold in Texas can work out what it would be used for.
State control indeed. Just don't have a phone if you feel that strongly. It's pretty evident that your phone can be tracked centrally and data taken from it years later.

https://www.ready.gov/alerts

Do they not have something already?

Don’t forget your tin foil hat 🙄

I was in Athens at the w/e and DH and I received three alerts for wildfires (all within 10 miles). Alarms were going off all over the shop.

Mine did NOT make a sound and it turned out my notification volume was turned right down (no idea how).

So if you really don't want to hear it, there are ways.

Yes but there a widespread reports that it did not work very well and many residents say they did not receive the alert.

Testing is important. This is why the test of our system here in the UK later this year is important.

Given Texas is huge and rural, the probably should have also had warning sirens in place as many areas will have poor phone coverage.
At the summer camp, they were encouraged /required not to have mobile phones with them.

Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire has flood sirens so it's not unheard of here to have them.

I have my phone on in the theatre because it connects my hearing aids to the theatre's accessibility provision so that the stage sound goes directly into my hearing aids. The front of house staff know this so don't be so quick to judge.

I work for the Environment Agency, and have an incident response role. We can use it to issue a Severe Flood Warning ie: when there is a risk to life. Not everyone has chosen to sign up to the "normal" flood warnings service.

Tbh not sure it would work with flash flood. They are called flash for a reason sadly

You're right. There are some catchments that can flood extremely fast, and we (Environment Agency) work closely with these communities and local authorities on incident response. Warnings can go a long way in flood risk management, even if flood defence is not possible.

When I was in California several years ago, I got an alert for the forest fires which had closed all the roads out of the town I was in due to the risk of landslides. I was due to depart that day and hadn't gone online to check the news (as I'm not a news obsessive).
When I was living in Ireland they frequently used the alert system to warn us about storms on the way, and also when to cover up potatoes/tomatoes for blight clouds.
What my phone never did was make an obnoxious or unusual noise, it was just a message on my lock screen in both countries. IDK why the UK one has to be different and I'm in two minds about it because obviously in a major disaster we'd probably want the noise to alert us quickly but that's not how other countries operate.
And to be fair the flood alerts in this country are absolutely ridiculous and depend on you knowing which rivers/bodies of water you're near instead of being map based or warning specific towns/regions, so you have to waste ages trawling through the long lists of flood alerts with a map with named waterways on it to find out which ones apply to you (especially if you're not familiar with the area you're in, or planning to travel somewhere non-local) or wait for someone on a newsdesk to have done it for you, I'd welcome my phone going off instead if I was near a potential flood.

I got an alert about the wildfires in Crete when I was on holiday last year. I found it useful as I knew how far away the fires were. We received a few alerts. The fires were not far away from us at all!

Oooh, that’ll show ‘em!

@MeringueOutang flood warnings map heree*. There's nothing on it today!

If you'd like flood alerts and warnings sent directly to you, you can sign up heree*. You can chose where you get warnings for. There are 2 lower level warning types, before we'd even consider the national alert system. You can get them by text, email or phone message. It's just information, there is no government mandate of things you must do if you receive one.

DH gets flood alerts, you just sign up, he has them because he has a boat and needs to know for taking it out or not, rather than flood risk for us as we are a few miles from the river but probably worth having if you live near a river also.

@MojoMoon

At the summer camp, they were encouraged /required not to have mobile phones with them

This is an interesting point. So going forward with this alert system there would need to be a requirement that in public places and group situations there's always a mobile phone, charged and set-up to receive these alerts. Similar to requirement to have access to a first aid kit and fire extinguisher, for example.

The point with the Summer camp is the staff were oblivious to the danger, not the children. They presumably had a fire alert system for example, that could wake all the children quickly.

Another camp in the area was alerted by a radio message and woke all the children.

There's going to be a lot of "blame" being bandied around in Texas... but a simple message is that more ways of getting the message out quickly is always going to be safer. Sirens, mobile alerts, tv/radio... everything helps.

I would have assumed at the summer camp that at least one of the leaders/adults would have had mobile phone with them.

When we do scout camps etc, the young people won't have their phones but leaders will. And an adult will be home contact, so not at the camp, but who can be the in-between communicator.

Gosh I don’t understand the hysterics over this.

This has been used a few times in my area. Usually weather related, but it’s better to have it working than not have it.

I don’t have news alerts set up (in fact I have almost all notifications turned off) and I don’t check for “breaking stories”. In fact since Covid and the world going to shit I avoid the news as much as possible. Lots of people are reporting doing the same. Having said that it doesn’t really matter. The alert will be for urgent things and no one is checking their phone for news every 2 minutes and notifications on phones are very easily missed.

That's just not true though. It may be how you use your phone but that doesn't mean it's how everybody, or even the majority, uses theirs.

I have no news apps on my phone and I don't check for breaking news as I don't need to know everything as it happens. I read the news when I choose to, and it is a purposeful read. I don't like the constant bombardment of typically negative news and many others feel the same.

Many older people use their phones quite sparingly because they just haven't been an ingrained part of life for them.

And the government have quite openly said what the service is for.