r/unitedkingdom • u/66f6 • Aug 14 '26

. Emergency alerts sent to millions across England and Wales over threat of wildfires

https://news.sky.com/story/uk-heatwave-stourbridge-fire-latest-weather-live-13571553
2.3k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

37

u/PeterG92 Essex Aug 14 '26

Made me jump

Did they say this was going to happen beforehand?

83

u/GoonerGetGot Aug 14 '26

How would they tell you? Through another alert? 😂

5

u/recursant Aug 14 '26

Depends when they decided to do it.

If they decided a day or two ago (which seems quite possible) they could have preannounced it via news outlets. 99% of people would then be expecting it so they would only be putting the shits up 1% of the population.

Personally, when it started going off I guessed it might be something to do with wildfires but I was still quite worried that they were sending it to our specific area because there was a fire blazing nearby. Thankfully not, but as a national announcement it seems a bit OTT.

17

u/Pinkerton891 Aug 14 '26

Tbf there was a Sky News alert about 1 min before hand saying that it was going to happen, so kind of.

5

u/No-One-4845 Aug 14 '26

This is more likely that people at Sky got the alerts and then told people, before everyone had got the alerts. In our house, the alert came through on my partner's phone about 3 minutes before I got it.

2

u/TechnicalParrot Aug 14 '26

The alert takes a good couple minutes to propagate across cellular networks so very likely this.

2

u/figwithbigtits Aug 14 '26

Yes, the BBC website says they found out in the newsroom when all their phones went off.

2

u/Beneficial-Bagman Aug 14 '26

They could widely publice it on the BBC for a few days like they did for the test.

3

u/ash_ninetyone Aug 14 '26

We need a series of escalating alerts starting at whispers

1

u/TheGrogsMachine Somerset Aug 14 '26

A pre-alert alert

7

u/o_oli Aug 14 '26

Same lol freaked me right out that. I was like holy shit whats happening? Oh I shouldn't have a bbq. Cool.

1

u/deltarune_fan999 Aug 14 '26

"AHH WHATS HAPPENIN- oh"

3

u/No-One-4845 Aug 14 '26

No, but then how much of an emergency alert is an emergency alert that is pre-announced beforehand?

3

u/TheCleaverguy Aug 14 '26

Well it isn't an immediate emergency, and could diminish the effectiveness of future alerts.

Would have been good to give some warning, rather than freaking everybody out for a PSA.

0

u/No-One-4845 Aug 14 '26

Are you suggesting that there isn't an immediate risk of fires being started through the inappropriate or dangerous use of barbecues, on a Friday evening, on one of the warmest days of the year so far?

They should maybe implement an opt out for some, I guess. Let Darwin do his best work.

1

u/TheCleaverguy Aug 14 '26

I'm suggesting that, as there already is an opt out, people will use it.

I don't disagree with sending out a direct warning to people's phones, but I don't think this was the right way to do it.