The government's alarm for major incidents.

[Justmuddlingalong]

After all the hoo-ha about the government alerting us about major incidents in the UK, testing the system and telling us all about it, you'd have thought that the recent weather and all the mayhem it's brought, now would have been the time to use it.

Why? It's not a major incident.

I think you'll find in Scotland it is most definitely a major incident.

Literally a major incident in north eastern Scotland and I have no clue why they haven't used it.

I rather think it is intended for use with unexpected major incidents rather than for bad weather, which everyone knew about already.

Screen shot of the alert info page on the UK government website

A friend's daughter in Nice, France got an emergency phone alert for the storm yesterday.

@LucyEwing of course it’s a major incident! People have died, homes and businesses have been destroyed! Or is the another “anything past the Midlands doesn’t exist?” …..

Yeah that's a good point, surely there must be the ability to send it to specific regions.

I know it says to be used for flooding, but surely that would be for a Boscastle - type event, or something like a reservoir dam in imminent danger of collapse where they have to evacuate on a large scale as a matter of extreme urgency.

I was in Norway in the summer when they had a major weather-related incident, "Storm Hans". I got alerts on my phone constantly about it - every time I travelled into a new county area I got a new sms message about it. Their system is set up to send out alerts to people within the counties affected so there is no reason why the UK couldn't set up something like that.
It was useful to get the alerts actually as some of them contained information about which major roads and train routes were affected.

I agree. What could they say? Stay at home if possible? Then businesses would be affected and blame the texts for keeping people at home. There would be a known affect.

Just as a tiny snapshot, my wife is an MRI radiographer, she's working until 9.30 today. If patients got a 'stay at home' alert on their phones then they wouldn't get a scan. Some of them will have been waiting months. And they aren't getting a scan for fun. You can die if something isn't picked up.

But they did have to evacuate 350 homes at short notice before the river broke through the flood defences, and it would have made sense to have used this.

I don't know how they actually achieved it yesterday... local radio, loudspeakers on police cars, door to door knocking? And yet not the much-promoted alert system?

The alerts don't barricade you in your home, they give you the latest advice. I know for many it seems weird that someone would be unaware, but there are people who don't spend a lot of time online or watch the news; not everyone is the target market as it were. A few people have sadly died as I understand it, i don't think everyone should carry on regardless without making their own assessment of risk is aspirational. I really think it's because the system is crap rather than a conscious effort to save people from missing a scan.

It's for like nuclear bombs and threats of war attacks etc or a natural disaster that's could be fatal for most life. Not a storm

@Unithorn The residents of Brechin could have been advised that they were being advised to evacuate before they were cut off; they were not being advised to stay at home.

Given that there’s a red warning in the north east, police are asking people not to make unnecessary journeys, and public transport’s been cancelled in large parts of Scotland, hospital appointments are being cancelled / missed anyway.

Some places are on a red alert, you would think it would have been used for the area they had to evacuate

Sorry @unithorn, that wasn’t intended for you, but for @DoozieDoh .

@Cas112 actually storms is one of the things it's meant to be for.
@Justmuddlingalong the test wasn't hugely successful. It didn't work for a lot of people (despite government saying it was...🙄). I am guessing as it didn't work they couldn't use it for this storm.
Apparently the USA had a national test a couple of weeks ago - that was a massive cock up too with many people not getting the alarm. It seems the technology isn't quite ready yet.

@Needmorelego I thought it was already up and running in the US

@crumblingschools apparently the American one is supposed to be tested nationally every 3 years and this was that test. Many people didn't get the alarm.
It is odd because in some parts of USA it has been running for years (Amber Alerts, Tornados etc) - but when they did it for the whole country at once it didn't work.

It never crossed my mind about this storm but I 100% agree with you OP.

This is exactly when it can be used for good. Make sure people get a warning.

Because it's for aliens not weather 😁

Good point OP. A major incident has been declared in our county this pm.

The weather has been much worse in places than we were warned of.

Everyone in our region of Scotland got it.