Government Alert caused more angst for domestic violence sufferer’s

[PurpleDisco]

Just heard from a friend who volunteers for a DA shelter that they’ve been inundated with calls today due to the Gov alert yesterday. The main issue being that secret phones that are always on silent mode were suddenly screeching loudly with a siren sound. The emergency siren automatically bypasses silent mode it seems. These secret phones are literally a lifeline for abused women / people and this has put their lives (and possibly children’s) in even more danger than they already were. Can you imagine the abuse and turmoil some women would have gone through last night once these phones were discovered by their abusive partners? Did the Government not think of this increased risk at all?

Well while I don’t doubt your experience, I would strongly advise against you going into any supportive counselling role in this particular area, based on your simplistic view of real life scenarios.

It must be nice to feel so privileged that nothing bad and unexpected will ever happen to your country. Unfortunately particularly with climate change you aren’t in that position anymore

Well, because the fire chief’s job is to worry about fires. The govt needs to make a trade-off decision each time. If people start to switch off the alerts because they are irrelevant or not emergencies then you start to undermine the whole system.

Plus the risk of distracting people while driving, revealing phones to DV suffers, etc. which also risks harm.

”Do you want peoples homes destroyed” is as simplistic as “do you want people dying in car crashes” or “do you want women abused by their partners?”.

Do you not realize the scale of the emergency?

There are several.states of emergency across the country. They are not all in rural areas there are fires in cities.

The fire service are under unprecedented pressure & are at breaking point. The army have been brought in as the situation is escalating. It was the fire service that have requested that.

You or your loved ones could be affected by a fire caused by anything - an electrical fault etc or be involved in a car crash & the fire service would be significantly delayed in reaching you as they are at breaking point. If your child was trapped in a vehicle following a crash & the nearest fire crew was tackling a blaze 50 miles away we could you still be complaining about the alert that could have prevented the fire & responded to your child immediately

Was the alert that bad for you that you would risk that delay.

You can switch off the severe alerts which seem to be just government information ones and keep the extreme alerts which are danger to life ones switched on

I find this quite hard to believe to be honest. The alerts have already been tested and it's well known that you can turn them off. Several houses have burned down in my area leaving people homeless; the alerts are important.

So you wouldn't get an alarm at 3am then would you?

Why on earth would I want to be a counsellor to grown adults who think child abuse is acceptable

I have the utmost sympathy for DA victims but the secret phones of a few cannot outweigh the safety of an entire country.

Do I think the government alert was an overreaction? Yes actually. I don't think it was an emergency situation that required a send to all text.

However the government made that decision and it cannot hesitate to do so if it deems the situation to be a national emergency. And for that reason you are being unreasonable.

If a snowstorm was relevant to you then you would receive it.
If it wasn't then you wouldn't get it.
I don't know if you miss-read what I wrote because you seem to think I am against the alerts.
I am the opposite.
I think the alert on Friday was a very important thing to do and I am glad the government did it.

It’s meant as an EMERGENCY alert, hence no prior notification. The clue is in the name.

It’s a strong loud sound due to the fact it’s a WARNING about a very serious situation.

When the alerts were launched, it was made very clear how to deactivate them - exactly for people
in this situation.

surely you’re not saying that emergency alerts shouldn’t exist for this reason?!

This alert was the first time I'd even heard of these alerts and the first time I'd received one. I thought it was some kind of scam until I checked on MN.

I'm not sure if they are automatically on when you buy a new phone, or if it's moved across in the data transfer, my phone is nearly three years old so probably before alerts were a thing so I can't remember if I had to change it.

It is hardly a random place. It is in notifications. It's not the government's fault that people dont know how to use their phones. This has been widely publicised since the alerts started being tested back in 2023.

Surely going into settings and searching is the obvious place to look to turn any feature of your phone on or off. It's easy to turn the alerts off

This subject had so much publicity when the tests first started I would have thought anyone who didn't want the alerts for any reason would already have turned them off

What is your suggestion for an alternative universal warning system?

It's good to be scam aware but it's taking things a bit far if you think even an obvious safety warning was a scam. In what way did you think someone might be scamming you?

Have you not lived in the UK for the last few years? There have been national campaigns, news items, test alerts…

They started testing in 2023. They did anotber nationwide test last year. They have been used in real situations several times.
All of these were widely publicised via print media, tv news, online media, social media, chat forums. I dont see how anyone can possibly have not known They were a thing.

The issue with the fires is that the fire service has exceeded their capacity to respond to further emergencies.

Take the new forest fires for example there are crews from London & Manchester among other areas that have been mobilized to assist, that leaves those areas with a massively reduced capacity to respond.

There are now several states of emergency across the country so every single fire service is now compromised in responding to emergencies eg if you or your loved one were in a car crash tomorrow there would be a delay in responding to you & if the situation gets any worse there is a very real risk that no one would get to you/your child before death.

If there are areas in the UK that don't have a current major incident/state of emergency then the local fire crews will be in areas that do & therefore unable to respond to emergencies in local areas.

The army have been mobilized for that very reason.

This situation affects everyone in the UK.

It is an emergency situation!

The fire service have exceeded their capacity to respond to emergencies.

Crews have been mobilized out of area to fight the large fires eg there are crews from all over the UK including London & Manchester. That leaves no capacity to respond to further emergencies.

The fire & rescue service don't just respond to fires - that's just a small part of the emergency response.

Anyone involved in a serious road traffic collision where they are trapped will face a delay in being rescued as there is literally no capacity to respond in many areas. The fire service attends many RTC every day & save countless lives - they are reaching the point where they have no crew to respond.

This puts everyone's lives at risk regardless of whether there's a wildfire next door or not.

@Portmore so are you saying the alert should have been to the whole of the UK and not just England and Wales?
(personally I wouldn't have a problem with that if I lived in Scotland or NI)

I'm not on the COBRA committee so can't answer that.

I would have thought the Scottish government would decide that?

I've never been to scotland but it's meant to be very wet so maybe there is not a high risk of fire?

There may well be fire crews from Scotland in England or Wales. There's crews from manchester & yorkshire currently in The New Forest in South of England.

It's a long old drive back up to Scotland if your bonfire does go out of control though

IMO they should have sent a text with the warning without the sound, as it wasn’t an urgent notification that needed to be seen that very second. Or sent a warning text that an emergency push notification with an alarm sound will be sent from the govt in 24 hours time, giving people a chance to disable it.

Mine is switched off. Terrible for DV situations.

But how would that work if it had been an alert of an immediate danger? There wouldn't be time to send a warning text then.
If you haven't disabled the alert system you will have to be prepared that the alarm may sound at any moment without warning. Because that's the point of it.