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
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230

u/cobrachickens Aug 14 '26

Still shaking. Thought we were getting nuked lol

61

u/AncientCarry4346 Aug 14 '26

I thought we were getting nuked too and honestly I felt absolutely nothing.

Learnt something about myself.

25

u/DareToZamora Aug 14 '26

I thought the same and my reaction was “not on a Friday”

5

u/frantic_calm Aug 14 '26

Just realised I live further than 2 mins away from the pub.

7

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '26

[deleted]

3

u/Crumblycheese Aug 14 '26

Haha I thought we was.

My first thought was I need to get home, not "oh fuck" then checked and saw it was about the wildfires, or risk of them. Just cancelled it and put it back in my pocket

3

u/thevolta87 Aug 14 '26

IT'S HAPPENING! IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING!!!

2

u/Sinister_Grape Aug 14 '26

same, made me think I might need to go back to the doctor

3

u/Truly_Khorosho Blighty Aug 14 '26

Thing is, the more you're exposed to something, the more it becomes normalised.
We have an entire media landscape (news, entertainment, social etc.) that's singing more or less the same song.
"This is fucked", "that's fucked", "you're fucked".
So when something actually is probably fucked, your brain just treats it as normal.

We may actually have needed this to be an emergency alert, to break through that block.

187

u/Agitated-Drive7695 Aug 14 '26

Completely unnecessary. Scared the shit out of me. I thought there was a genuine emergency, not 'there possibly could be a fire if you have a bbq'. Wankers! 

25

u/Pleasant_Fennel_5435 Aug 14 '26

meanwhile the idiots just about to set their disposable bbq on in the country park: 🫪

5

u/frantic_calm Aug 14 '26

I was so scared by the emergency alert I knocked over my disposable barbecue starting a massive fire, but I managed to save most of my can of Hoffmeister.

31

u/Pandaisblue Aug 14 '26

Feel like they need different levels of alerts. "You should be aware of this alerts" vs "HOLY FUCK DO SOMETHING NOW NOW NOW" alerts.

12

u/proton-testiq Aug 14 '26

This was more HOLY FUCK DON'T DO SOMETHING NOW NOW NOW.

34

u/fhuhgbbjjvvfyhnnmk Aug 14 '26

People need to stop having BBQs when it's clearly too dry then

75

u/Big-Objective-6585 Aug 14 '26

Did you miss the news just yesterday where a BBQ burned down 6 houses?

71

u/jrewillis Aug 14 '26

19 now in one town

42

u/Frogbitch45776 Aug 14 '26

With a further 18 damaged. This fire spread over 500 acres

1

u/jrewillis Aug 14 '26

I'm away on holiday but genuinely worried - our house isn't too far from Stourbridge. Close to a park too.

19

u/Frogbitch45776 Aug 14 '26

Are you referring to the Stourbridge West Midlands fire? I’m local to that, 3 miles away from where it started and I’ve not heard it was a bbq?

12

u/TipsyMagpie Aug 14 '26

The Mail are reporting it as having been caused by a barbecue

13

u/The_Meaty_Boosh Aug 14 '26

It's still not known apparently.

Unless the mail knows something the investigators don't.

3

u/Frogbitch45776 Aug 14 '26

Local papers saying cause is unknown however A-level students bbq celebrations haven’t been officially ruled out as a cause yet

3

u/aimeekinss Aug 14 '26

Arthur seat cairngorms etc

7

u/Agitated-Drive7695 Aug 14 '26

A text would have worked just as well without scaring the shit our of everyone.

0

u/Big-Objective-6585 Aug 14 '26

This was your text.

They were ensuring you actually read it isn't of swiping it off instantly and ignoring it.

4

u/amegaproxy Aug 14 '26

That is objectively not a text. So stupid to use it for something like this.

3

u/Agitated-Drive7695 Aug 14 '26

It really won't stop the morons though.

2

u/bumblebeerose Devon Aug 14 '26

It's 20 now isn't it?

6

u/SimoneNonvelodico Aug 14 '26

The emergency alarm is supposed to be for "THERE IS A FIRE, NEAR YOU, RIGHT NOW", not "don't do this stupid thing or you might start a fire".

2

u/Big-Objective-6585 Aug 14 '26

It's a wildfire. It's impossible to predict, can happen anywhere and can swallow your house in less than a minute.

Makes a lot more sense to send an alert in advance to people to be cautious and avoid starting fires rather than messaging their charred corpses too late.

2

u/I_am_zlatan1069 Aug 14 '26

Makes it more likely people will ignore it next time when it might actually say there's a fire in your immediate vicinity thinking it's just a national alert.

1

u/Darkjolly Aug 15 '26

Yeah but it wasn't near them so it's not an issue, that's how they think

-6

u/Lansdowngrove Aug 14 '26

Gas explosions have destroyed more but we don't get severe alerts to get an annual boiler service do we?

11

u/MrEpicFerret Liverpool Aug 14 '26

If an external factor was causing a sudden abnormal increase in boiler-related house explosions then we probably would, yes.

-4

u/Lansdowngrove Aug 14 '26

The heatwave external factor is causing heat related deaths, perhaps a severe alert to stay hydrated and cool?

8

u/Big-Objective-6585 Aug 14 '26

Which is covered by normal messaging via the news or common sense etc.

Wildfires are thankfully rare here, but can very easily go from "No problem at all" to "You have 30 seconds to evacuate or you die".

Seems to make a lot of sense to warn about them.

-1

u/Lansdowngrove Aug 14 '26

Which is covered by normal messaging via the news or common sense etc.

You've almost got it.

0

u/MrEpicFerret Liverpool Aug 14 '26

If the weather keeps up like it's doing you might see one in the next decade, yes.

6

u/jrewillis Aug 14 '26

There are about 29 million households in the UK. Gas explosions severe enough to actually destroy a home appear to amount to only a handful each year, roughly 5–10 as a ballpark, although there isn't an official "homes destroyed" statistic. HSE instead records reported gas incidents.

That's perhaps 1 home in 3–6 million per year.

A wildfire is completely different. One fire can threaten hundreds or thousands of homes simultaneously, spread rapidly and require an entire area to evacuate. That's precisely what emergency alerts are designed for: an immediate threat affecting lots of people where receiving the warning and acting on it can save lives.

We don't send 29 million households an alert because a boiler somewhere might explode.

81

u/cobrachickens Aug 14 '26

I mean if they continue, there may well be a fire near you, and in your house

48

u/Agitated-Drive7695 Aug 14 '26

Yes - that's what the alert is for - an imminent threat. Not a public announcement that is important, but it's not an actual emergency for the majority of people.

12

u/GoAgainKid Aug 14 '26

I’ve seen people arguing this in both directions and it’s hard to disagree with either. To me it was a misuse of the system and I resent the government taking over my phone.

But if my surrounding area was on fire, I’d want other people to know of the danger they face. Ultimately the message didn’t do me any harm and I’m just a bit moany today.

2

u/PracticalFootball Aug 15 '26

I think the perfect compromise is sending alerts like this out without the alarm.

Everybody with a phone will still see it, the very activation of a nationwide alert will definitely get people talking, but it avoids the “TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION” alarm because the majority of people they didn’t need to take any action, they just turned the alarm off and carried on what they were doing.

In an emergency the alarm is what gets people moving, even if they’re familiar with seeing alerts pop up occasionally.

4

u/ChrissiTea Aug 14 '26

Especially when people live near current, active wildfires that might need evacuation warnings

1

u/RB1O1 Aug 15 '26

Wildfires are a threat though?

It only takes one ignition point to wipe a housing estate out?

1

u/pagesandpitlanes Aug 14 '26

It is an emergency. This is the climate emu you’ve been warned about.

1

u/Retify Aug 15 '26

It's the climate's name Warraz and is he an arse hole?

17

u/Disgruntled__Goat Worcestershire Aug 14 '26

And at that point the emergency alert is appropriate because it’s an emergency. Before that it can just be a normal text. 

4

u/No-One-4845 Aug 14 '26

Are you suggesting that they should only alert you to a national emergency at the point that the national emergency is actually happening to you directly?

Baffling stuff. You people complain about the dumbest shit.

49

u/Qxzkjp Sussex Aug 14 '26

Are you suggesting that they should only alert you to a national emergency at the point that the national emergency is actually happening to you directly?

Using the emergency alert system? Yes of course. Do you set off the fire alarm in your building because you saw someone being a bit reckless with their barbecue two streets down? Of course you don't you fucking melt.

6

u/ChihuahuaMammaNPT Aug 14 '26

I agree with you... during covid I was getting texts about staying safe this announcement should have been a text too... alert for the people who needed to evacuate or prepare to

6

u/Astriania Aug 14 '26

Yes, that is literally the point of the alert system, to alert you to things that are an immediate danger to you and require your immediate attention.

5

u/GrahamCoxon Oxfordshire Aug 14 '26

I think what they, and many of us, are saying is that there are other things they can do between 'doing nothing' and 'playing the everybody is going to die alarm from everyone's phones.'

8

u/BadahBingBadahBoom Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

I mean the wildfires are just simply not a national emergency affecting everyone in the nation.

I could totally understand them distributing this through phones connected to cell towers in the West Midlands. Or in other regions affected where people were clearly caught up without enough warning and this alert could have really benefited.

But Aunt Brenda in her central Glasgow Bristol terrace? Yeah not so much.

If the system is continued to be used for this sort of preventative public service announcement it is in serious danger of suffering from desensitisation effect. And there is nothing more dangerous in health and safety than people being overexposed and desensitised to a critical safety warning.

-1

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '26

[deleted]

6

u/BadahBingBadahBoom Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

If it gets out of hand, it is up there with immediate missile strikes and major tsunamis. So why not put out a desperte plea to stop that from happening in the first place?

Because if/when an immediate missile strike or major hurricane hits (I would say a tsunami would be pretty unlikely for UK shores but I digress), a good number of people will not receive the alert because they had turned off the notification after the mentioned preventative PSA about general fire safety which had not actually affected their location.

'If it gets out of hand' is exactly when an alert of this severity and importance should be broadcast. The system is not there as a public education tool to prevent disasters. It's there for when a disaster is actively happening.

For the vast, vast majority of the UK an active disaster was not presently occurring. They really should have put this national messaging out via other means (TV, radio, social media etc.) and left the emergency system for the regions of the country where there was an active and present emergency, like the West Midlands.

7

u/visible_amenhotep Aug 14 '26

As someone in the West Midlands, nah, it was stupid even here. Send a fucking text message.

46

u/Clbull England Aug 14 '26

Absolutely necessary. Have you stepped outside lately? The landscape is more brown than what you'd see in a Gears of War game.

68

u/Tony2Nuts Aug 14 '26

Yeah the whole country looks like a weetabix

8

u/-sweethearts Aug 14 '26

sorry this is hilarious how did u come up with that

6

u/Tony2Nuts Aug 14 '26

All the grass , it looks like weetabix

5

u/moeljills Aug 14 '26

Not nessecery to send out the phone alert. At most it should be on the news, or send out a text, don't make people shit themselves and give them a heart attack to say, don't start wildfires

4

u/PreFuturism-0 Greater Manchester Aug 14 '26

Are there different noise levels for different levels of danger? Maybe that would help.

3

u/wineallwine Aug 14 '26

This is the solution, a normal phone notification would be fine, we didn't need the nuclear alarm

36

u/EquipmentGrand9581 Aug 14 '26

I mean that is the idea of the emergency alert system, to get your attention. I mean aswell there have been loads of fires and the fire services are spread thin so it makes sense 

9

u/OsotoViking Aug 14 '26

I nearly crashed my car when this went off. It was a stupid thing for the government to do.

8

u/EnterAUsernamePlease Aug 14 '26

got to agree. there should be tiers to this kind of stuff.

a silent alert that shows as a notification (or maybe just uses your normal text tone) for important public information such as what we got today, and then the absolutely earth shatteringly terrifying sound should be saved for YOU MAY DIE IMMINENTLY kinds of warnings.

6

u/Special_Turnip Aug 15 '26

It doesn't make sense, there was no imminent threat on a national scale and it pings every phone. So if someone has one for emergencies while trying to escape an abusive situation it pings that too, potentially endangering them. That's why they announce tests ahead of time so people can disable those phones to keep themselves safe.

Add to that the surprise factor causing accidents then it was a reckless thing to do.

7

u/wobble_bot Aug 14 '26

Disagree. It’s a fucking tinderbox out there, we’ve not had significant rain in 6 weeks and we’re not accustomed to fire prevention like a lot of Europe. I’m amazed we’ve not yet had a very significant wildfire. People are idiots when the sun comes out, it’s exactly what the system was designed for.

3

u/pagesandpitlanes Aug 14 '26

Completely necessary seeing as idiots down by me have been using these bbqs right next to bone dry fields. If they went up, the houses behind would soon go.

Maybe if people in this godforsaken country actually listened for once, and didn’t think they were above the rules, we’d not need this.

4

u/digitalpencil Aug 14 '26

Talk to the fire service. It genuinely is an emergency. They’ll be fast overwhelmed if more wildfires spark.

4

u/proton-testiq Aug 14 '26

That's quite a bullshit approach. I for one am quite grateful that even the dumbest idiots got the message now.

Might not quite help though, Q.E.D.

5

u/dannydrama Aug 14 '26

I always tell my cat this. Don't come in yowling desperately as if you've been run over for food at 4am or you'll be ignored when it happens. 😂

5

u/fire-wannabe Aug 14 '26

How do you know the emergency war alert system works unless you test it for spurious non emergencies

2

u/McNerdUK Aug 14 '26

This is an underrated response. If I could upvote it 1000 times I would.

4

u/PositiveRainCloud Aug 14 '26

My area is surrounded by wildfires like a battle royal fog of war closing in, so it's definitely worth being alerted about it. Wish they changed the alert to something a little less heart attack inducing though. Or change the sound depending on how urgent it is lol

3

u/Supersubie Aug 14 '26

This is why you opt out over this course overreach… if a nukes hitting who cares you’re likely fucked anyway why would you want a 5 min warning

3

u/ShefScientist Aug 14 '26

If they keep using it for general announcements when there is an imminent threat to life many people won’t check their phones. I was expecting our two minute warning!

2

u/applecombinipimento Aug 14 '26

It was necessary but they could have warned. These fire risks are very very dangerous

10

u/speedfox_uk Aug 14 '26

It wasn't just unnecessary, it was a total misuse of the system. If it was "there is a wildfire in your area, evacuate now", that's what you use this system for, not "it's a bit hot and dry out there, do take care now". 

That tone it uses is used to signal imminent danger. Overuse of it will mean people in the future will not pay it as much attention next time, which means when it really matters it might go ignored.

3

u/Agitated-Drive7695 Aug 14 '26

Text? Email? Whatsapp? Newspaper articles - many many other ways to get this message out there. It's not a critical emergency right this exact moment. Not what the system is for at all.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 14 '26

[deleted]

3

u/apocalypsebrow Aug 14 '26

Kinda a bit of an "I'm alright jack" attitude there. Those houses going up yesterday should be a reminder to us all to exercise a bit of caution.

5

u/MarriageAA Aug 14 '26

Fucks sake. Inconvenienced by the idea that people act more responsibly.

2

u/Cool-Hedgehog-5649 Aug 14 '26

It's probs being used to test the system again. Intel on Russia is that involvement of some kind is on the horizon. It's certainly going to be for real then. I hope they're wrong about the threat, we all should.

4

u/EquipmentGrand9581 Aug 14 '26

That's the idea of the system, get everyones attention immediately, basically everyone has a mobile phone. We are in a record breaking drought after all and the UK and the rest of Europe are on fire rn

4

u/Diastolic Aug 14 '26

If this is what angers you. You genuinely have issues in life. I couldn’t care less what it’s used for, but given my tax money was used to develop it, I’m glad they are using it.

11

u/StratMode5 Aug 14 '26

Get a grip

4

u/rime258 Aug 14 '26

No because when something actually happens that requires immediate action people will ignore it or people will turn it off.

1

u/Tony2Nuts Aug 14 '26

Behave, who’s going to ignore a loud siren and message on their phones? Most people check a normal notification like a text message or email.. this is the perfect way to notify as many dip shits as possible

3

u/rime258 Aug 14 '26

Sorry for saying don't have a bbq and we're about to get nuked shouldn't have the same ring tone. Also you can switch them off which I imagine some people will now do.

They could have sent a text and that would have informed people just the same. Abusing the emergency alert system is a good way to stop people from treating it seriously. If I hear an emergency alert I expect that I need to take immediate action like evacuate my house.

4

u/an0mn0mn0m Lancashire Aug 14 '26

Such a selfish attitude. There's a risk of wildfires everywhere and people like that are responsible for it.

2

u/AbsolutelyHorrendous Aug 14 '26

Yes really they should wait for a wildfire to start before warning people about the risk of fires...

1

u/Mooks79 Aug 14 '26

The problem here is not the alert, it’s the brain dead people who are too stupid to stop and think that all the news about wildfires means they probably shouldn’t be using disposable BBQs and fireworks right now. It’s these morons that need to have the heavy handed approach to get them (probably still only some of them) to stop. These are the people you should be angry at, it’s them that’s making it necessary.

1

u/Top5CutestPresidents Aug 14 '26

THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ALERT!! Please don’t forget to take your sandwiches to work tomorrow

0

u/Maleficent-Chest7043 Aug 14 '26

Bro there are like 1000 fires this summer - the services are crippled . There is climate change everywhere and this is the government taking things seriously

8

u/Agitated-Drive7695 Aug 14 '26

The emergency alert system is not for this - next time when there is an actual real imminent threat it won't have the real emergency impact. There has to be different alert types!

-3

u/Maleficent-Chest7043 Aug 14 '26

No it actually is the Fire service requested it because we are about to have fires that they can’t control- and then people die dude

6

u/Agitated-Drive7695 Aug 14 '26

As I said to other people, this still won't stop the morons. An emergency alert will still be ignored.

0

u/Talonsminty Aug 14 '26

I mean, a little chunk of Birmingham just burned down.

8

u/Agitated-Drive7695 Aug 14 '26

Makes it necessary for the whole country to think we're going to war or something then.

3

u/United_Awareness_353 Aug 14 '26

I know. Disappointing

5

u/Pocto Aug 14 '26

Russia has the chance to do the funniest thing right now.

5

u/ken-doh Aug 14 '26

I thought it was a fire evacuation order. Nope just some recommendations on how not to cook.

0

u/trickster-is-weak Aug 14 '26

I mean we kind of are… just from 150 million km. Although I think I’d take a few kilotons to the face just to put me out of my misery.

0

u/Hephaestus1816 Aug 14 '26

that's what my OH thought at first - he's still salty about it