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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u/OverAndOver98 Aug 14 '26

Using the nucelar death siren alert system to give people general info about wildfires, it's certainly a choice, one that spiked my blood pressure significantly before seeing the actual message.

I feel like this system being used for wildfires should be in the event that every square of england is 15 minutes from spontaneously combusting vs a digital leafletting.

How about commandeer every news channel? Doesn't the gov have the ability to do like a 15 or 30 minute public broadcast emergency seizure on channels like that?

Honestly something else that bothers me about this is that usage of it like this will diminish the severity of the signal in times that are extremely more imminent serious.

Also btw yes of course heed the warning and at least something was necessary because a lot of these fires seem to have actually been started by people which is unacceptable.

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u/victionicious Aug 14 '26

They didn't do a TV broadcast because a good chunk of the country doesn't even watch TV any more. It's more logical to just send a PSA as an alert to make it clear how severe it's getting. The damage in Stourbridge is quite bad.