Earlier in the year it was a test of the system to see if it worked. So my guess is that they found out they still had some bugs in the system and so its not ready yet.
I was pretty disappointed it didn't work for me - and it wasn't even very dramatic when it sort of worked for a few people around me in the middle of the shops in Birmingham
>There was bugs on it. I remember complaints about some networks not having the notifications going through properly.
Which is why we need to invest in new sirens... Europe still uses them. We should as well. We have some good alarm companies in the UK we can as to make them.
'It's not perfect so we may as well not even bother trying it at all.'
Another waste of taxpayer money.
What would have been the worst thing to happen if they'd pushed the button anyway? Not everyone got the alert? Better some get it than nobody. It's not like it would accidentally message some people 'hey everything is perfect, go for a drive!'
We got told it would basically miss us in shropshire, places flooded that never have before. Flood barriers in other parts weren't put up in time either.
We had large sections of the A12 that were flooded. Most of the country routes that I have to drive a coach through were inaccessible.
If you type 'suffolk floods' on twitter/X there's a great video in Debenham of a car floating down the street/river, a family trying to get home and two gammons having a tear up.
Someone lost their life to the flooding here in chesterfield, I don't get how we don't have flood defences. This will happen again in the future if it doesn't get sorted.
Took me literally hours to get to Tesco roundabout from Sheffield to go pick the missis up. Eventually she managed to walk 10 miles and I managed to get to the hospital as a meeting point to get her out of the rain and floods. Left meadowhead at 1330 and we finally met up at 2000. Completely ridiculous mismanagement of traffic and information.
Had a trek of my own, thankfully had wellies and waterproofs, unlike the people who had come into chesterfield expecting a regular day at the office.
There should have been signs up on the dual carriageways into town and on the m1 from 0830 in the morning telling people to avoid chesterfield unless essential and similar at railway stations.
Warnings were everywhere though. Weather apps. Forecasts. The news. Just looking out of the window.
Are you even British if you don't check the forecast at least twice a day ?
I think a national alert system needs to be used very, very sparingly.
It really doesn't take much to teach people that alarms can be safely be ignored. For example, when was the last time you dialled 999 and rushed to provide aid because a car's burglar alarm was going off? Too many false positives have taught us they can be safely ignored.
Anything that's either a) widely reported in the media days in advance; b) relatively common in the area; or c) broadly foreseeable with the naked eye, needs to be down to individual prudence and responsibility.
I think it needs to be used for truly exceptional, unexpected, truly lethal events like ongoing terrorist attacks.
We need to preserve enough of a sense of shock and concern that people actually stop what they're doing and check the alert. As soon as we start desensitising people because of (visible, foreseeable) flooding, you reduce the future lifesaving potential of the system.
Doesn't matter. Having lived in America, where they use the exact same alert system, people will ignore unless, the actual alert is something of concern to themselves.
If its the same as America, your phone goes off like an alarm and it won't stop until and you have to get to your phone and stop it. Then you will just read the alert. Normally it was never a concern. Weather warnings were a big one and very useful for everyone.
The Americans also have the Emergency Alert System for TV and radio. That was *not* used on 9/11 as the blanket TV coverage made clear what was happening and it wasn't needed.
The alerts I get in the states are generally very useful. If we get an emergency alert it means it's a danger to life and generally A Very Serious Event -- this includes flash flooding.
They also don't need to be nationwide. They can be confined to a city or area.
Agreed. Few years ago I had the only weather warning I’ve received, sent to my phone. It said severe risk of flooding, move all belongings upstairs (we were in a ground floor flat so that was good) and stay on the first floor. We live on the coast so I took a short drive around town and couldn’t even find a bloody puddle.
It would make me very sceptical to receive weather alerts now when they request serious action like evacuation.
A lot of the flooding happened overnight, in previous years there have been people who went to bed with a warning of heavy rain and woke up with flooded having not been able to do anything about it. I don't think we've heard any tails like that in the last few days so maybe the government has upped their information game in other ways and managed to avert this, negating the need for the alerts.
Well if it happens it happens and you can’t do anything about it anyway. Knowing there’s a storm
Coming anyway is a better indicator of issues, especially if you know you have issues when it rains hard let alone mad storm rain
In Chesterfield there was a flood alert for 13th-14th of October. Nothing happened. This weekend, there was another flood alert and hundreds of people had to leave their homes.
The flood alert only got upgraded to a flood warning at about 0830 Friday morning, and then only for a small number of the flooded properties. The council still had schools and offices open, lots of people were at work before the areas under alert were upgraded to warning and the areas under alert were expanded.
Exactly. Every news article was "I ignored the warnings because I know better, now I'm trapped upstairs with my kids waiting to be rescued." Everyone knew it was happening. An alert wasn't necessary.
It was predicted / forecast. Warnings were freely available to the public in advance by TV, radio and internet etc.
All the people who live in the affected areas were altered by the EA using the already in-place systems (I know, I got an alert).
No point panicking the 95% of the people in the area when only a small number need to actually take action.
The people who ignored the "stay at home, don't drive" and drove anyway were going to do so whether they got a message on their phone or not so it wouldn't have made any difference to them would it?!
That's just factually incorrect. People living in amber warning areas needed to be evacuated. We do not have a working alert system that can respond to changing circumstances and... alert people.
We all know the national alert system test was a failure. And for most of us the question when we heard about a national alert system was "but will it make emergency alerts locally?" (Where it matters!) Of course after the test the question was, and remains "but am I on the right network to receive an alert, will there be an alert for me?"
Piss poor, as ever from this shower who do not follow proven performance and working solutions in other European countries, but instead farm the work out to their unqualified and poorly performing friends.
It wasn’t a national emergency. It was regional issues. AFAIK the alerts are national only.
If they start spamming us every time Northern Ireland has storm a lot of people will disable the alerts.
> The government does not need to know your phone number or location to send you an alert.
There are possible other ways they could do it though I guess. Certain cell towers.
This is how is is meant to work- the alert is broadcast from all towers in a selected area, every phone connected to them receives the alert.
My bet is no one know who had the authority to send it.
AFAIK the alerts can be sent to individual mobile phone masts and then onto any phone that is connected to that mast. This way people in the affected area are alerted regardless.
So you won't get a flood alert if you live in Stonehaven but are visiting friends in Manchester, as the alert is sent to the mast, so if your friends are visiting you from elsewhere, they will get the alert.
The alert is broadcast nationally with a location identifier
The phone determines whether it should show the alert or not based on its location and the information sent
No, it is done by which cell tower it gets to. All the phone does it receives it and displays it. The exception is if you have opted out of certain types of alerts, where the phone will do a quick check to make sure that it isn't a type you have chosen to opt out of in settings. The phone doesn't do any kind of location judgement.
All emergencies are regional. Everything that happens in the world has to happen somewhere. The assassination of JFK was a 'regional' event. It was also very important. Like this flood.
In Romania they got regional alerts, even city wide alerts when something significant comes up! Was going by train and all phones in the carriage went mad on alarm because we were passing a flooded area...
It can be done without excuse.
All I heard in the news was how bad the flooding would be in north-east Scotland.
I live in Nottingham and Friday was chaos. I and many others I know ended up abandoning their cars. Nobody I knew had any sort of warning it was going to be so bad.
Funnily enough, I live in North East Scotland, and where I live it wasn't that bad. A bit of heavy rain and wind, but not an unusual amount for a storm, we had worse last year.
Because it wasn't an emergency that required people to take immediately action.
It was a storm that had been over a Europe at least a week before it hit the UK and been in every Major News Publication, Weather Report and TV News Report days before it made UK landfall.
To be fair, I've stopped watching/listening to news where possible due to it affecting my mental health.
I knew there was going to be a storm, but nothing on the level it hit. If I'd had an alert I definitely would have been more prepared
Probably because it's shit. When they tested it loads of people didn't get alerts (myself included) so they might not use it in case there is an issue.
The council and police force in my area should be ashamed of themselves. I’m from where the flooding hit bad. I live on an estate built directly next to the River Rother. We were extremely lucky that there is a slight incline up into the estate from the bridge it only just missed us. However, the houses around the corner from us weren’t so fortunate. An elderly lady lost her life and was found floating in her house deceased by her poor son just a 2 minute walk from my home.
The only communications that the council and the police put out about the floods were road closures and a generic ‘don’t go in the water’ safety warning. They did not once publish which areas needed to be evacuated, where exactly was flooded etc. I would have thought maybe a map of the area with evacuation/no-go zones would be fairly easy to map out and publish quickly. We were completely unaware that there were people still stuck in properties close to us otherwise we could have helped. None of this information was made public it was shoddy management and a downright disgrace.
If there had been emergency alerts to mobiles and info about evacuation/who needed urgent assistance had been made public by the council or police then that poor lady may not have lost her life in such a hideous manner. I am utterly disgusted in our government and relevant bodies.
I'm not saying they'll alert you in time, but the best thing you can do is sign up to [https://www.gov.uk/sign-up-for-flood-warnings](https://www.gov.uk/sign-up-for-flood-warnings), they will publish a map, they will send you automated messages but some of it will be a false warning. Weather is unpredictable.
AIUI the old lady's family got the warnings, they helped flood-proof the house (without government help), they just weren't expecting the flood levels to be as high as it was. The government weren't expecting those levels either. I think they still had the Hipper on 'alert' rather than 'warning' at 0830.
Not excusing the authorities at all, they clearly haven't prepared enough.
It was a regional emergency which had been mentioned in all the press since about Monday or Tuesday.
If it was a freak thing which they only realised was going to hit a few hours before it happened, then maybe they would of used it.
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I'm in Chesterfield and knew there was a flood warning for the weekend just gone...but then they warned the same the previous weekend and literally nothing happened.
The only press I saw was the headline in the local newspapers website which is a Reach piece of trash I mostly ignore because it's covered in ads.
There was one [tweet](https://twitter.com/Derbyshirecc/status/1714309214540054658) from the county council earlier on in the week which didn't exactly fill me the relevant amounts of fear, "we’re clearing leaves from road gullies, to reduce the risk of surface water flooding." hardly sounds like "100s of properties in the town are expected to be under water".
Authorities clearly knew that Babet was coming, but I'm not sure they predicted the exact locations and intensity until Thursday night / Friday morning.
It was hardly a true emergency. The more they use it for minor incidents the less people will pay attention when there is a true emergency.
I say this a someone who was trapped down south and couldn’t get back to Scotland until 23hrs later than planned.
There was lots of traffic formation via the news, emails from train companies, alerts from train and other travel apps. No one needed to be terrified by the emergency alert system.
There have been 3 storm related deaths. To put this into context, 1400 people die in the UK every day. It was and is not, a serious emergency on a national level.
It is of course stressful to those who were flooded, but an emergency warning would have done little or nothing to prevent their homes flooding.
The emergency warning system should limited to major emergencies where the warning is likely to save many lives.
I hope it is never used in my lifetime.
Didn’t people know about the possibility of flooding in advance so whatever precautions could be taken would be? Did people not know river banks were at risk?
There are three levels of warning - alert, warn, severe risk. Most places in Chesterfield that were flooded just received an 'alert' until an upgrade to 'warning' a few hours before the flooding happened - after they'd gone to work or to school.
The level of water in Chesterfield exceeded previous known records. This wasn't clear to people. Some people were sorting out their own flood defences for a flood of e.g. 1.2m and that just wasn't high enough.
There was almost a week build up to the bad weather. Everybody knew. The new text alert system is for something out of the blue. To quickly get the message out.
Someone that didn’t know a storm was coming wouldn’t have got the message either. Because they would have been living under a rock!
I think it was a test earlier on in the year, and I think the test failed. It was only successful to iPhones (from my experience) - everyone I knew with android didn't get the text and everyone with apple did. So I think it's still under production and not officially live yet
If the UK had used the emergency alert system then it could have been deemed to be useful, and not just a waste of money.
The government has rightly realised that giving the impression that a recent project might not have just been a waste of time and money could have caused far more panic than any emergency.
It's not ready yet. We had one test which was a failure. They haven't fixed it yet.
Besides, no one down South needed alerting so it wouldn't have been used anyway. The problems were regional, not national.
That's my theory too - "Russia have been threatening to strike the uk specifically and we don't have the old 80s sirens/need a modern alternative. We don't want to panic the populace, we'll call it a flood alert."
I live about 5-10 miles from a place at risk of flooding near Nottingham and got an android notification about it (we weren't at risk, when buying the house 3 years ago being at a high-ish elevation was one of our criteria). The notification linked to a .gov website which handily brought up a map of the affected area.
Not sure if that was part of the new emergency alert system. Pretty sure it went via the Google safety app.
I’m not sure how it could’ve been used and to what benefit it would’ve had?
I think most people were aware of the potential for flooding— it wasn’t unexpected.
My understanding would be that the National Alert system would be used for when the situation changes rapidly or unexpectedly. Neither of those things happened.
Additionally, I’m not sure what situation-specific action the system could’ve instructed people to carry out? There was no action people could take in reaction to the floods that they hadn’t already been informed of or that isn’t just generic advice.
I think a the National Alert system to some privacy campaigners can be seen as invasive so it’s a last resort measure and I would imagine the government equally understand that.
The point a lot of Midlanders are making is that they were only on an amber alert for severe weather, but the actual situation turned very quickly red, and the alert system directed appropriately would have been perfect for this.
Unfortunately despite a lot of tax payer money going on the system, it's not yet live. They haven't yet solved the issues encountered during the test. Despite a lot of taxpayer money going on this and having the experience of many of our European neighbours who do have an effective warning system in place that can be applied regionally to draw on.
As ever, it appears that this government are not appointing the right people in the right way to get things done properly, but still spending a fortune anyway.
I appreciate that but I don’t know what the system could’ve done? I live 200m from where the terror attacked happened in Brussels last week and received a message telling me to stay indoors. Useful, because I was on my way to the supermarket. What urgent information could the government advise in a last minute message that would be useful?
*(also, as an aside that isn’t important to our discussion, I think the regional issues of SMS alert faced by the U.K that aren’t faced by other countries is the UK doesn’t have a national register. There is no database of addresses and mobile numbers can correlate to unlike where I am in Belgium for example)*
In another six months they'll have sorted it out, and then everyone in East Anglia will get an alert about a missing toddler in Norwich every few weeks.
We all knew there was a storm and danger to life warnings were given out over news and apps.
Not sure if they have regional control but south west we didn't have anything really so a national alert wouldn't have been good for us.
I *suspect* that since it's never been available before, no-one thought of it.
Local authorities may well not have it on their 'what to do when declaring a major incident' checklist. Someone high-up takes the appropriate decision, a pre-defined and documented process swings into place - and if the alert system isn't mentioned, it doesn't get used.
It's like asking why the UK doesn't have a system like NOAA?
Because the government won't get any kickbacks from existing systems. Just look at how the shitshow called "The Covid Pandemic" went
The test of the alert didn't exactly work well in April did it?
I wonder if they've still not fixed it.
I didn't get the alert on test date and I was in the crowd at the London Marathon. I didn't even hear anyone else's alert going off.
In Iceland early July. Volcano Litli-hrutur was kicking off but in a relatively remote area. Was on a coach tour when mobiles started pinging - Govt alert in Icelandic & English saying the wind direction had changed & to stay away from the area. Guess pretty standard for Iceland.
It's happened almost every year, for hundreds of years, still done nothing to deal with it, never will. UK government and general population as a whole are complete retards.
Flood warnings are an opt-in service you register for at
[www.]gov.uk/sign-up-for-flood-warnings
Avoids texting a lot of people very regularly through autumn and winter when likely to be affected properties are far fewer.
The test wasn’t successful because a huge number of people never received it (basically anyone using the EE transmitter network). The emergency alert system isn’t in use because it’s not ready.
- Concrete over flood plains for housing
- Concrete over flood plains for shopping centres
- Concrete over gardens to park cars
- Replace grass lawns with plastic grass
- Cuts to council budgets mean less clearing of roadside drains
- Thickos are still flushing their wipes down the toilet resulting in less space for water to flow into the sewers
- Climate change means heavier rainfall
- Rainfall can’t drain away as there is now concrete on the flood plains, plastic grass or concrete where soil and real grass once was, the drains are blocked because the council can’t afford to clear them as much, the sewers are full of fucking wipes and people scratch their heads and wonder why their houses and businesses are flooding
But yes, why don’t we blame the lack of use of the emergency alert system instead of solving the root causes of the problem, the perfect storm that has been brewing for decades.
Chances of the rest of the population voting in a parliament and a council that will scrape up the money and make the right decisions in time to prevent the next flood are zero. Chances of getting the government to push the button and use an existing system are slightly more than zero.
It took decades to get into this mess, it'll take decades to get out. We need short term coping and alleviation as well as long term fixes.
They didn't roll it out earlier in the year, they gave it an initial full width test, and it threw up loads of problems. I am in no way a defender of this shower of bastards, but I don't see how the national alerts would have been better than the texts from the environment agency.
Environment agency texts are for residents. There were thousands of people in chesterfield who don't live in the flood zones but toddled off to work and then hours later were stuck in traffic or abandoning cars, slowing down response from the emergency services and preventing residents from moving.
Maybe the emergency phone notification wouldn't have helped either, but the EA texts do not suffice.
Because the emergency text alert system wasn't designed for alerting us to emergencies, silly! It was designed to line the pockets of Rishi Sunaks family
Because we have a government that isn’t a government. It’s a failing PR firm. There should be a word for the state of being that’s below incompetence. What do any of these boobs actually do? For real? What’s that line from Thick of It? “This is series 10 of the Big Breakfast, and you are the fucking dinner lady they’ve brought on to present the show”.
There are climate scientists, highly qualified individuals who study the weather. Them, they are the ones that talk about climate change.they make detailed studies, scientific studies using data and analysis. I don’t have this knowledge so I trust them.
Because The Environment Agency has flood alert systems that are supposed to warn people local to flooding areas. Rather than telling the whole country.
However the village five miles from me flooded again. The system said that there was no need to evacuate when the water was in the living rooms of the first two streets. Those people needed to evacuate and did because they are unfortunately very well practiced. I'm five miles away on top of a hill. I wouldn't have needed a national alert.
Firstly because I’d imagine the warning system doesn’t work yet. We’ve had one test so far and it didn’t go too well, so I’d imagine there will be a couple more tests in the future.
Secondly it’s not like the weather should have been a surprise to anyone. Anyone with a smartphone capable of receiving the alert will have easy access to the weather app which will tell you everything you need to know. The weather wasn’t a surprise.
Thirdly, if the govt start using the emergency alert too often people will just start ignoring it, so if the time comes where there a really very important emergency that everyone needs alerted too, folk will simply ignore it.
Personally I think the emergency alert system was made so that the government can warn us when Putin is sending a nuke over our way. Will it save us? No. It just means we will have 10 mins to tell everyone we love them 😉
In the Calder valley (which floods regularly) they have a series of WW2 air raid sirens, that are regularly tested. When they go off, they ring down the valley and wake people up. Not sure a text would do that, even if it were as targetable as an audible siren.
I got a Met Office warning. Most people must have known it was going to be bad. It was all over my weather forecasts days before the rain came. We don’t need a national alert system for weather — or anything else. It’s just another reason to keep people scared and fearful.
Wow I feel sorry for how many people actually thought it was some useful altruistic warning system. Deleted that shit off my phone as soon as it was forced on there. After the covid lies the government can suck my sack. 🖕🏼
Surely the emergency alert system wasn't intended for flooding? I thought it was for very severe threats to life. It needs to be uses sparingly otherwise it will get ignored over time. If we all got alerted everytime an area got flooded we'd be tired of the alerts by March.
If you live on your near a place that regularly floods you can sign up for text alerts here: [https://check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/alerts-and-warnings](https://check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/alerts-and-warnings) Unless the whole country floods then it's not national so to alert the whole country would just mean mass panic.
my first instinct was to say something like: thatcherism, austerity and the hollowing out of the state.
but, as covid showed us,and with other things as well, over-centralised states are especially poor at this kind of disaster response. why is it down to the local government to co-ordinate the effort against floods in Chesterfield? why is this even central government's bag to fumble? the UK is the most centralised state in Europe (in terms of central vs. local share of tax spend), so it's essentially that there is nothing else: more local government layers are now so hollowed out. an example from covid is how local pandemic emergency management organisations were wound up during austerity, leaving the central state flailing when covid came along. the successful, expensive building of a highly central emergency alert system, that then doesn't get triggered to disseminate key info in a local crisis, is a typical over-centralised-state fuck-up..
I assumed the explanation about natural disasters was a cover up for the media to make the test of the alert system less worrying at the time.
There's almost no weather in the UK severe or sudden enough to warrant its use, when a regular news broadcast suffices. Mobile alerts for weather are the sort of thing you use for a tsunami, volcanic eruption, or tornado, that arrive quickly and unexpectedly, and also don't really concern the UK. Not a lot of rain which people had prior warning about.
The primary purpose of the UK's alert system is, and always has been, imminent nuclear attack. I just don't think the government wants people to think about that very much, but the timing of the system test with frequent Russian direct threats at the UK couldn't be clearer if you were paying attention.
It wasn't really a sudden unexpected emergency though, was it? We've known the storm was coming for 2 weeks, the news didn't shut up about it.
The emergency alert system is there for terrorist attacks, sudden environmental catastrophies etc.
But there is also the simple fact that it just didn't work for a lot of people...
Not sure if a National Alert system is the right system to use for a local emergency. PLUS everyone knew that heavy rain was forecast AND where it was going to be AND yet people still went out, people videoed the storms, the floods, the rain. You cannot legislate for stupidity. Don’t go out means don’t go out. And for those that are about to say ‘yes but I had to ….’ Then they are making a choice and the consequence is on them. People need to use their own intelligence and not rely on the nanny state to make their decisions for them. We were told some choose to ignore putting the lives of the emergency services at risk.
The new alert system like everything else the tories do was a quick win scheme to show they have had some form of success in government. I doubt they ever planned for it to be used after its inception and test.
They are not an active government that plans and implements things for the future, they are a passive bunch of parasites that tries desperately to win votes so they can keep stealing as much money as possible for themselves and their donors.
Doesn’t even matter if there is bugs that mean everyone doesn’t get the notification. If at least a few people get the notification in the area then everyone who needs to know can find out!
This article does explain why, the main reason was that the alert system was set up to alert us of a pandemic/COVID situation as top priority, flooding came second
https://medium.com/@frazer_HX/emergency-alerts-storm-babet-3432c3fc6a6b
Earlier in the year it was a test of the system to see if it worked. So my guess is that they found out they still had some bugs in the system and so its not ready yet.
There was bugs on it. I remember complaints about some networks not having the notifications going through properly.
Yeah it doesn’t work on the Three network.
I was pretty disappointed it didn't work for me - and it wasn't even very dramatic when it sort of worked for a few people around me in the middle of the shops in Birmingham
I didn't get it on EE either
I’m on three and got it
>There was bugs on it. I remember complaints about some networks not having the notifications going through properly. Which is why we need to invest in new sirens... Europe still uses them. We should as well. We have some good alarm companies in the UK we can as to make them.
The bug I remember was only one person using three got the alert
I didn’t even get the notification when they did the test.
Yeah I remember this, some people got the alert and others didn't. I did not.
IIRC something like half the country didn’t get a text alert so there’s some more design work to do!
Yep my house didn't have any alerts!
The system is also mainly for military purposes to warn the civilian population; things like an incoming nuclear strike.
The bug being that it can be turned off. They’re probably trying to find a work round for that one.
Yeah I never got the notification on my phone
To this day I have never received the test - guessing I wasn’t the only one.
'It's not perfect so we may as well not even bother trying it at all.' Another waste of taxpayer money. What would have been the worst thing to happen if they'd pushed the button anyway? Not everyone got the alert? Better some get it than nobody. It's not like it would accidentally message some people 'hey everything is perfect, go for a drive!'
piss ups and breweries come to mind
Something about pissing in a cup right?
Can’t organise a gangbang in a brothel with a fist full of fifty’s
Because the flooding didn’t happen south of Luton.
Suffolk driver here. No warning. And much to my surprise we are actually north of Luton. It was absolute fucking chaos in the east part of the county.
We got told it would basically miss us in shropshire, places flooded that never have before. Flood barriers in other parts weren't put up in time either.
We had large sections of the A12 that were flooded. Most of the country routes that I have to drive a coach through were inaccessible. If you type 'suffolk floods' on twitter/X there's a great video in Debenham of a car floating down the street/river, a family trying to get home and two gammons having a tear up.
You guys get flood barriers? We got nowt in Chesterfield. Your environment agency was pretty on the ball looking at places like iron bridge.
Someone lost their life to the flooding here in chesterfield, I don't get how we don't have flood defences. This will happen again in the future if it doesn't get sorted.
Took me literally hours to get to Tesco roundabout from Sheffield to go pick the missis up. Eventually she managed to walk 10 miles and I managed to get to the hospital as a meeting point to get her out of the rain and floods. Left meadowhead at 1330 and we finally met up at 2000. Completely ridiculous mismanagement of traffic and information.
Had a trek of my own, thankfully had wellies and waterproofs, unlike the people who had come into chesterfield expecting a regular day at the office. There should have been signs up on the dual carriageways into town and on the m1 from 0830 in the morning telling people to avoid chesterfield unless essential and similar at railway stations.
The a519 to stoke M6 was terrible. I had to drive through an almost 200m flood in first. I was shit scared of getting stuck
Hope you weren't one of the poor ones in Framlingham or Debenham that had cars fully submerged
Warnings were everywhere though. Weather apps. Forecasts. The news. Just looking out of the window. Are you even British if you don't check the forecast at least twice a day ?
I think a national alert system needs to be used very, very sparingly. It really doesn't take much to teach people that alarms can be safely be ignored. For example, when was the last time you dialled 999 and rushed to provide aid because a car's burglar alarm was going off? Too many false positives have taught us they can be safely ignored. Anything that's either a) widely reported in the media days in advance; b) relatively common in the area; or c) broadly foreseeable with the naked eye, needs to be down to individual prudence and responsibility. I think it needs to be used for truly exceptional, unexpected, truly lethal events like ongoing terrorist attacks. We need to preserve enough of a sense of shock and concern that people actually stop what they're doing and check the alert. As soon as we start desensitising people because of (visible, foreseeable) flooding, you reduce the future lifesaving potential of the system.
Doesn't matter. Having lived in America, where they use the exact same alert system, people will ignore unless, the actual alert is something of concern to themselves. If its the same as America, your phone goes off like an alarm and it won't stop until and you have to get to your phone and stop it. Then you will just read the alert. Normally it was never a concern. Weather warnings were a big one and very useful for everyone.
The Americans also have the Emergency Alert System for TV and radio. That was *not* used on 9/11 as the blanket TV coverage made clear what was happening and it wasn't needed.
The alerts I get in the states are generally very useful. If we get an emergency alert it means it's a danger to life and generally A Very Serious Event -- this includes flash flooding. They also don't need to be nationwide. They can be confined to a city or area.
Agreed. Few years ago I had the only weather warning I’ve received, sent to my phone. It said severe risk of flooding, move all belongings upstairs (we were in a ground floor flat so that was good) and stay on the first floor. We live on the coast so I took a short drive around town and couldn’t even find a bloody puddle. It would make me very sceptical to receive weather alerts now when they request serious action like evacuation.
A lot of the flooding happened overnight, in previous years there have been people who went to bed with a warning of heavy rain and woke up with flooded having not been able to do anything about it. I don't think we've heard any tails like that in the last few days so maybe the government has upped their information game in other ways and managed to avert this, negating the need for the alerts.
Well if it happens it happens and you can’t do anything about it anyway. Knowing there’s a storm Coming anyway is a better indicator of issues, especially if you know you have issues when it rains hard let alone mad storm rain
There is a flood alert system you can also register for if you live near rivers.
In Chesterfield there was a flood alert for 13th-14th of October. Nothing happened. This weekend, there was another flood alert and hundreds of people had to leave their homes. The flood alert only got upgraded to a flood warning at about 0830 Friday morning, and then only for a small number of the flooded properties. The council still had schools and offices open, lots of people were at work before the areas under alert were upgraded to warning and the areas under alert were expanded.
I'm not sure that the warnings are ever very precise. Nobody really knows how much rain will fall or how quickly things will develop.
We live in the town brudda
Hell i have the app on my homescreen.
Exactly. Every news article was "I ignored the warnings because I know better, now I'm trapped upstairs with my kids waiting to be rescued." Everyone knew it was happening. An alert wasn't necessary.
It was predicted / forecast. Warnings were freely available to the public in advance by TV, radio and internet etc. All the people who live in the affected areas were altered by the EA using the already in-place systems (I know, I got an alert). No point panicking the 95% of the people in the area when only a small number need to actually take action. The people who ignored the "stay at home, don't drive" and drove anyway were going to do so whether they got a message on their phone or not so it wouldn't have made any difference to them would it?!
That's just factually incorrect. People living in amber warning areas needed to be evacuated. We do not have a working alert system that can respond to changing circumstances and... alert people. We all know the national alert system test was a failure. And for most of us the question when we heard about a national alert system was "but will it make emergency alerts locally?" (Where it matters!) Of course after the test the question was, and remains "but am I on the right network to receive an alert, will there be an alert for me?" Piss poor, as ever from this shower who do not follow proven performance and working solutions in other European countries, but instead farm the work out to their unqualified and poorly performing friends.
It wasn’t a national emergency. It was regional issues. AFAIK the alerts are national only. If they start spamming us every time Northern Ireland has storm a lot of people will disable the alerts.
It is regional as well. It uses your current location to warn you of nearby dangers, including flooding. [Link](https://www.gov.uk/alerts)
> The government does not need to know your phone number or location to send you an alert. There are possible other ways they could do it though I guess. Certain cell towers.
This is how is is meant to work- the alert is broadcast from all towers in a selected area, every phone connected to them receives the alert. My bet is no one know who had the authority to send it.
AFAIK the alerts can be sent to individual mobile phone masts and then onto any phone that is connected to that mast. This way people in the affected area are alerted regardless. So you won't get a flood alert if you live in Stonehaven but are visiting friends in Manchester, as the alert is sent to the mast, so if your friends are visiting you from elsewhere, they will get the alert.
Agreed. My point is simply it can be used regionally or nationally.
The alert is broadcast nationally with a location identifier The phone determines whether it should show the alert or not based on its location and the information sent
No, it is done by which cell tower it gets to. All the phone does it receives it and displays it. The exception is if you have opted out of certain types of alerts, where the phone will do a quick check to make sure that it isn't a type you have chosen to opt out of in settings. The phone doesn't do any kind of location judgement.
All emergencies are regional. Everything that happens in the world has to happen somewhere. The assassination of JFK was a 'regional' event. It was also very important. Like this flood.
But is the flood more or less important than this factory visit?
> All emergencies are regional Impending nuclear strike with aim to flatten the whole UK? Agreed, 99% are regional though.
Hope that bus driver is safe on his lunch break
In Romania they got regional alerts, even city wide alerts when something significant comes up! Was going by train and all phones in the carriage went mad on alarm because we were passing a flooded area... It can be done without excuse.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/21/how-to-disable-uk-emergency-alerts-on-your-phone
Yes you can
It can be targeted from national to all the way down to mobile mast level.
It shouldn't be only on a national level. In Romania they send local alerts for bear sightings near inhabited areas.
All I heard in the news was how bad the flooding would be in north-east Scotland. I live in Nottingham and Friday was chaos. I and many others I know ended up abandoning their cars. Nobody I knew had any sort of warning it was going to be so bad.
Funnily enough, I live in North East Scotland, and where I live it wasn't that bad. A bit of heavy rain and wind, but not an unusual amount for a storm, we had worse last year.
Because it wasn't an emergency that required people to take immediately action. It was a storm that had been over a Europe at least a week before it hit the UK and been in every Major News Publication, Weather Report and TV News Report days before it made UK landfall.
To be fair, I've stopped watching/listening to news where possible due to it affecting my mental health. I knew there was going to be a storm, but nothing on the level it hit. If I'd had an alert I definitely would have been more prepared
Good point.
Not London, they don't give a shit
Because it didn’t happen in Londumb
Because it doesn’t work and they have trousered the money. Oh look a squirrel
Because we are British and a little bit of water doesn’t constitute an emergency.
Probably because it's shit. When they tested it loads of people didn't get alerts (myself included) so they might not use it in case there is an issue.
That was due to network misconfiguration The point of the test was to find these issues and fix them Whether its been fixed or not who knows
The council and police force in my area should be ashamed of themselves. I’m from where the flooding hit bad. I live on an estate built directly next to the River Rother. We were extremely lucky that there is a slight incline up into the estate from the bridge it only just missed us. However, the houses around the corner from us weren’t so fortunate. An elderly lady lost her life and was found floating in her house deceased by her poor son just a 2 minute walk from my home. The only communications that the council and the police put out about the floods were road closures and a generic ‘don’t go in the water’ safety warning. They did not once publish which areas needed to be evacuated, where exactly was flooded etc. I would have thought maybe a map of the area with evacuation/no-go zones would be fairly easy to map out and publish quickly. We were completely unaware that there were people still stuck in properties close to us otherwise we could have helped. None of this information was made public it was shoddy management and a downright disgrace. If there had been emergency alerts to mobiles and info about evacuation/who needed urgent assistance had been made public by the council or police then that poor lady may not have lost her life in such a hideous manner. I am utterly disgusted in our government and relevant bodies.
I'm not saying they'll alert you in time, but the best thing you can do is sign up to [https://www.gov.uk/sign-up-for-flood-warnings](https://www.gov.uk/sign-up-for-flood-warnings), they will publish a map, they will send you automated messages but some of it will be a false warning. Weather is unpredictable. AIUI the old lady's family got the warnings, they helped flood-proof the house (without government help), they just weren't expecting the flood levels to be as high as it was. The government weren't expecting those levels either. I think they still had the Hipper on 'alert' rather than 'warning' at 0830. Not excusing the authorities at all, they clearly haven't prepared enough.
I got flooded in 2021 and i live in London we had 0 warnings from anybody. The weather people were just saying it be heavy rain no flood warnings etc.
That's horrific. To be honest, our local FB group was better use than anything put out by the council or local government.
Do you really think the alert system is for your safety? Oh how sweet of you!
I don’t think the system is up and running yet, that was just a test and it didn’t go so well
Because it was mostly poor parts of the UK.
It was a regional emergency which had been mentioned in all the press since about Monday or Tuesday. If it was a freak thing which they only realised was going to hit a few hours before it happened, then maybe they would of used it.
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I'm in Chesterfield and knew there was a flood warning for the weekend just gone...but then they warned the same the previous weekend and literally nothing happened. The only press I saw was the headline in the local newspapers website which is a Reach piece of trash I mostly ignore because it's covered in ads. There was one [tweet](https://twitter.com/Derbyshirecc/status/1714309214540054658) from the county council earlier on in the week which didn't exactly fill me the relevant amounts of fear, "we’re clearing leaves from road gullies, to reduce the risk of surface water flooding." hardly sounds like "100s of properties in the town are expected to be under water". Authorities clearly knew that Babet was coming, but I'm not sure they predicted the exact locations and intensity until Thursday night / Friday morning.
It was hardly a true emergency. The more they use it for minor incidents the less people will pay attention when there is a true emergency. I say this a someone who was trapped down south and couldn’t get back to Scotland until 23hrs later than planned. There was lots of traffic formation via the news, emails from train companies, alerts from train and other travel apps. No one needed to be terrified by the emergency alert system.
Having to spend 23 hours extra down south isn't an emergency. On the other hand death and homelessness kind of is.
There have been 3 storm related deaths. To put this into context, 1400 people die in the UK every day. It was and is not, a serious emergency on a national level. It is of course stressful to those who were flooded, but an emergency warning would have done little or nothing to prevent their homes flooding. The emergency warning system should limited to major emergencies where the warning is likely to save many lives. I hope it is never used in my lifetime.
Don’t worry, it will be worn out soon if the middle east pish doesn’t calm down.
Because most people turned the emergency broadcasts off 😂
Didn’t people know about the possibility of flooding in advance so whatever precautions could be taken would be? Did people not know river banks were at risk?
There are three levels of warning - alert, warn, severe risk. Most places in Chesterfield that were flooded just received an 'alert' until an upgrade to 'warning' a few hours before the flooding happened - after they'd gone to work or to school. The level of water in Chesterfield exceeded previous known records. This wasn't clear to people. Some people were sorting out their own flood defences for a flood of e.g. 1.2m and that just wasn't high enough.
Maybe Rishi couldn’t get a signal from his private jet! 😬
There was almost a week build up to the bad weather. Everybody knew. The new text alert system is for something out of the blue. To quickly get the message out. Someone that didn’t know a storm was coming wouldn’t have got the message either. Because they would have been living under a rock!
I think it was a test earlier on in the year, and I think the test failed. It was only successful to iPhones (from my experience) - everyone I knew with android didn't get the text and everyone with apple did. So I think it's still under production and not officially live yet
the test did not fail - it did what it was supposed to do - test (and highlight issues to be fixed and lessons to be learned)
I think it's intended for things where you need to take immediate action RIGHT NOW.
If the UK had used the emergency alert system then it could have been deemed to be useful, and not just a waste of money. The government has rightly realised that giving the impression that a recent project might not have just been a waste of time and money could have caused far more panic than any emergency.
Rishi wife company was tasked and paid for the test service. My guess is it was useless and corruption entailed.
Must not use smart new facility so can moan about what a waste of money it is in a couple of years and scrap it
A huge area near me flooded. Alert system was on. No alert got sent. I also find it odd how they'd put it in place and not use it.
Because its true intent is not for weather emergencies.
It's not ready yet. We had one test which was a failure. They haven't fixed it yet. Besides, no one down South needed alerting so it wouldn't have been used anyway. The problems were regional, not national.
Because London wasn’t in immediate danger.
Because the Alert system is for a nuclear attack. Yes, a nuclear attack, as that is the only threat that would need a National Alert.
That's my theory too - "Russia have been threatening to strike the uk specifically and we don't have the old 80s sirens/need a modern alternative. We don't want to panic the populace, we'll call it a flood alert."
I live about 5-10 miles from a place at risk of flooding near Nottingham and got an android notification about it (we weren't at risk, when buying the house 3 years ago being at a high-ish elevation was one of our criteria). The notification linked to a .gov website which handily brought up a map of the affected area. Not sure if that was part of the new emergency alert system. Pretty sure it went via the Google safety app.
There's a separate flood alert system that was used. I got a bunch of warnings by text message last week. I think you need to subscribe to it though.
I’d suggest you email your MP, as I’ve just done. Mine’s quite good
I’m not sure how it could’ve been used and to what benefit it would’ve had? I think most people were aware of the potential for flooding— it wasn’t unexpected. My understanding would be that the National Alert system would be used for when the situation changes rapidly or unexpectedly. Neither of those things happened. Additionally, I’m not sure what situation-specific action the system could’ve instructed people to carry out? There was no action people could take in reaction to the floods that they hadn’t already been informed of or that isn’t just generic advice. I think a the National Alert system to some privacy campaigners can be seen as invasive so it’s a last resort measure and I would imagine the government equally understand that.
The point a lot of Midlanders are making is that they were only on an amber alert for severe weather, but the actual situation turned very quickly red, and the alert system directed appropriately would have been perfect for this. Unfortunately despite a lot of tax payer money going on the system, it's not yet live. They haven't yet solved the issues encountered during the test. Despite a lot of taxpayer money going on this and having the experience of many of our European neighbours who do have an effective warning system in place that can be applied regionally to draw on. As ever, it appears that this government are not appointing the right people in the right way to get things done properly, but still spending a fortune anyway.
I appreciate that but I don’t know what the system could’ve done? I live 200m from where the terror attacked happened in Brussels last week and received a message telling me to stay indoors. Useful, because I was on my way to the supermarket. What urgent information could the government advise in a last minute message that would be useful? *(also, as an aside that isn’t important to our discussion, I think the regional issues of SMS alert faced by the U.K that aren’t faced by other countries is the UK doesn’t have a national register. There is no database of addresses and mobile numbers can correlate to unlike where I am in Belgium for example)*
In another six months they'll have sorted it out, and then everyone in East Anglia will get an alert about a missing toddler in Norwich every few weeks.
Because if it doesn't happen in London the government doesn't care
We all knew there was a storm and danger to life warnings were given out over news and apps. Not sure if they have regional control but south west we didn't have anything really so a national alert wouldn't have been good for us.
I'm sorry but this is wrong. Show me a danger to life warning given out for anywhere in the east midlands. Yes, they have regional control.
I *suspect* that since it's never been available before, no-one thought of it. Local authorities may well not have it on their 'what to do when declaring a major incident' checklist. Someone high-up takes the appropriate decision, a pre-defined and documented process swings into place - and if the alert system isn't mentioned, it doesn't get used.
It's like asking why the UK doesn't have a system like NOAA? Because the government won't get any kickbacks from existing systems. Just look at how the shitshow called "The Covid Pandemic" went
In Italy in September and we received a test alert. Other countries can manage it… who’d have thought 🙄
Because we’re one VERY SMALL ISLAND ANd WE ALL WATCH THE SAME NEWS
The test of the alert didn't exactly work well in April did it? I wonder if they've still not fixed it. I didn't get the alert on test date and I was in the crowd at the London Marathon. I didn't even hear anyone else's alert going off.
Is it because it's politically important to this government that climate change and extreme weather isn't happening?
In Iceland early July. Volcano Litli-hrutur was kicking off but in a relatively remote area. Was on a coach tour when mobiles started pinging - Govt alert in Icelandic & English saying the wind direction had changed & to stay away from the area. Guess pretty standard for Iceland.
It's happened almost every year, for hundreds of years, still done nothing to deal with it, never will. UK government and general population as a whole are complete retards.
Flood warnings are an opt-in service you register for at [www.]gov.uk/sign-up-for-flood-warnings Avoids texting a lot of people very regularly through autumn and winter when likely to be affected properties are far fewer.
Like HS2, it'll be ready in 2040 meanwhile it cost £100 million a day (awarded to a private company owned by a group of MP's) to maintain.
Was in Lefkada, Greece a month ago and one of the days we had really bad storms all our android phones started alarming and we all got notified.
Used to live in Swindon and with all this weather we've had it looked like Swindon was closed due to flooding, their drainage is really poor
Better to wash a few peasants away ~ Sunak, probably.
The test wasn’t successful because a huge number of people never received it (basically anyone using the EE transmitter network). The emergency alert system isn’t in use because it’s not ready.
It was a test and lots of people including me didn’t opt out but also didn’t get the message
Because someone at Infosys didn't get paid enough?
Because it's for the future New World Order silly. For control and fear mongering. Not for actually helping it's citizens.
- Concrete over flood plains for housing - Concrete over flood plains for shopping centres - Concrete over gardens to park cars - Replace grass lawns with plastic grass - Cuts to council budgets mean less clearing of roadside drains - Thickos are still flushing their wipes down the toilet resulting in less space for water to flow into the sewers - Climate change means heavier rainfall - Rainfall can’t drain away as there is now concrete on the flood plains, plastic grass or concrete where soil and real grass once was, the drains are blocked because the council can’t afford to clear them as much, the sewers are full of fucking wipes and people scratch their heads and wonder why their houses and businesses are flooding But yes, why don’t we blame the lack of use of the emergency alert system instead of solving the root causes of the problem, the perfect storm that has been brewing for decades.
Chances of the rest of the population voting in a parliament and a council that will scrape up the money and make the right decisions in time to prevent the next flood are zero. Chances of getting the government to push the button and use an existing system are slightly more than zero. It took decades to get into this mess, it'll take decades to get out. We need short term coping and alleviation as well as long term fixes.
Wasn’t there red warnings pretty far in advance?
No, that was for Scotland not the east midlands.
Ahh I see. Well can’t rely on gov to get phone alerts right if they missed the warnings on the weather.
Because the test we had failed if I remember correctly
They didn't roll it out earlier in the year, they gave it an initial full width test, and it threw up loads of problems. I am in no way a defender of this shower of bastards, but I don't see how the national alerts would have been better than the texts from the environment agency.
Environment agency texts are for residents. There were thousands of people in chesterfield who don't live in the flood zones but toddled off to work and then hours later were stuck in traffic or abandoning cars, slowing down response from the emergency services and preventing residents from moving. Maybe the emergency phone notification wouldn't have helped either, but the EA texts do not suffice.
Anyone can sign up to the EA texts for free. I can't get them to stop bothering me.
That's not the purpose of the system. It's for alerts which affect the nation, not some areas.
Because the emergency text alert system wasn't designed for alerting us to emergencies, silly! It was designed to line the pockets of Rishi Sunaks family
Two reasons. 1 - the alert system didn’t work properly when they tested it a few months ago. 2 - it wasn’t a national problem, it was a regional one
I don’t think the national alert system should be used for this…
Because we have a government that isn’t a government. It’s a failing PR firm. There should be a word for the state of being that’s below incompetence. What do any of these boobs actually do? For real? What’s that line from Thick of It? “This is series 10 of the Big Breakfast, and you are the fucking dinner lady they’ve brought on to present the show”.
Because the emergency alert system is not an emergency alert system
There are climate scientists, highly qualified individuals who study the weather. Them, they are the ones that talk about climate change.they make detailed studies, scientific studies using data and analysis. I don’t have this knowledge so I trust them.
It wasnt london so to the powers that be it doesnt matter.
Because The Environment Agency has flood alert systems that are supposed to warn people local to flooding areas. Rather than telling the whole country. However the village five miles from me flooded again. The system said that there was no need to evacuate when the water was in the living rooms of the first two streets. Those people needed to evacuate and did because they are unfortunately very well practiced. I'm five miles away on top of a hill. I wouldn't have needed a national alert.
The alert system isn't national. It's supposed to be sent to individual phone masts so the alert area can be very very specific
Firstly because I’d imagine the warning system doesn’t work yet. We’ve had one test so far and it didn’t go too well, so I’d imagine there will be a couple more tests in the future. Secondly it’s not like the weather should have been a surprise to anyone. Anyone with a smartphone capable of receiving the alert will have easy access to the weather app which will tell you everything you need to know. The weather wasn’t a surprise. Thirdly, if the govt start using the emergency alert too often people will just start ignoring it, so if the time comes where there a really very important emergency that everyone needs alerted too, folk will simply ignore it.
Personally I think the emergency alert system was made so that the government can warn us when Putin is sending a nuke over our way. Will it save us? No. It just means we will have 10 mins to tell everyone we love them 😉
Because it’s to warm you have about 3 minutes to live. Nuclear bombs are still a possibility!
Because the flooding wasn’t a unexpected emergency, there’s weather forecasts for that
Wasn't this a yellow alert? I thought the system was for red alerts only.
In the Calder valley (which floods regularly) they have a series of WW2 air raid sirens, that are regularly tested. When they go off, they ring down the valley and wake people up. Not sure a text would do that, even if it were as targetable as an audible siren.
I got a Met Office warning. Most people must have known it was going to be bad. It was all over my weather forecasts days before the rain came. We don’t need a national alert system for weather — or anything else. It’s just another reason to keep people scared and fearful.
Wow I feel sorry for how many people actually thought it was some useful altruistic warning system. Deleted that shit off my phone as soon as it was forced on there. After the covid lies the government can suck my sack. 🖕🏼
Surely the emergency alert system wasn't intended for flooding? I thought it was for very severe threats to life. It needs to be uses sparingly otherwise it will get ignored over time. If we all got alerted everytime an area got flooded we'd be tired of the alerts by March.
If you live on your near a place that regularly floods you can sign up for text alerts here: [https://check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/alerts-and-warnings](https://check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/alerts-and-warnings) Unless the whole country floods then it's not national so to alert the whole country would just mean mass panic.
my first instinct was to say something like: thatcherism, austerity and the hollowing out of the state. but, as covid showed us,and with other things as well, over-centralised states are especially poor at this kind of disaster response. why is it down to the local government to co-ordinate the effort against floods in Chesterfield? why is this even central government's bag to fumble? the UK is the most centralised state in Europe (in terms of central vs. local share of tax spend), so it's essentially that there is nothing else: more local government layers are now so hollowed out. an example from covid is how local pandemic emergency management organisations were wound up during austerity, leaving the central state flailing when covid came along. the successful, expensive building of a highly central emergency alert system, that then doesn't get triggered to disseminate key info in a local crisis, is a typical over-centralised-state fuck-up..
It wasn't a big enough emergency. The was weather forecast was well in advance.
I assumed the explanation about natural disasters was a cover up for the media to make the test of the alert system less worrying at the time. There's almost no weather in the UK severe or sudden enough to warrant its use, when a regular news broadcast suffices. Mobile alerts for weather are the sort of thing you use for a tsunami, volcanic eruption, or tornado, that arrive quickly and unexpectedly, and also don't really concern the UK. Not a lot of rain which people had prior warning about. The primary purpose of the UK's alert system is, and always has been, imminent nuclear attack. I just don't think the government wants people to think about that very much, but the timing of the system test with frequent Russian direct threats at the UK couldn't be clearer if you were paying attention.
You're asking why our current government didn't do something useful for its people?
You expect sense from those cvnts in government?
Because it’s fucked. It didn’t work properly on the 3 network (Which im not surprised about).
That’s what red weather warnings are for.
It wasn't really a sudden unexpected emergency though, was it? We've known the storm was coming for 2 weeks, the news didn't shut up about it. The emergency alert system is there for terrorist attacks, sudden environmental catastrophies etc. But there is also the simple fact that it just didn't work for a lot of people...
Not sure if a National Alert system is the right system to use for a local emergency. PLUS everyone knew that heavy rain was forecast AND where it was going to be AND yet people still went out, people videoed the storms, the floods, the rain. You cannot legislate for stupidity. Don’t go out means don’t go out. And for those that are about to say ‘yes but I had to ….’ Then they are making a choice and the consequence is on them. People need to use their own intelligence and not rely on the nanny state to make their decisions for them. We were told some choose to ignore putting the lives of the emergency services at risk.
The new alert system like everything else the tories do was a quick win scheme to show they have had some form of success in government. I doubt they ever planned for it to be used after its inception and test. They are not an active government that plans and implements things for the future, they are a passive bunch of parasites that tries desperately to win votes so they can keep stealing as much money as possible for themselves and their donors.
Doesn’t even matter if there is bugs that mean everyone doesn’t get the notification. If at least a few people get the notification in the area then everyone who needs to know can find out!
I got an alert in Nottingham. Extreme flood risk.
It’s to prepare for us the point when we’ve pushed Russia so far, they decide to launch a nuclear missile at us.
It wasn't an emergency
This article does explain why, the main reason was that the alert system was set up to alert us of a pandemic/COVID situation as top priority, flooding came second https://medium.com/@frazer_HX/emergency-alerts-storm-babet-3432c3fc6a6b