Why you should allow the government make your phone ring

Should you turn those nasty emergency alarms on your phone off? I would argue, no. It might save your live one day.

The government being able to access your phone’s location and send messages to it sounds — on the face of it — rather dystopian. Yet, this is exactly what happened a few weeks ago when the phones of most people went off at the same time at 3pm on Saturday, 23rd April. I was sat in the university library in Oxford when, what I thought were fire alarms, went off. It took me some moments to realise that the noise was actually coming from my phone which also displayed the emergency message: “This is a test of Emergency Alerts, a new UK government service that will warn you if there’s a life-threatening emergency nearby.”

I had not heard about the test in advance which is completely down to me because it was well communicated in the media. In the days leading up to the alert, the Cabinet Office assured the country, that no action would need to be taken. The government had also worked with organisers of major sports events like the London Marathon to minimise the disruption on the day.

The current plan is to use the alarms for weather-related emergencies like severe flooding, wild fires and other extreme weather events. In the future the use cases for the alert system could be expanded further to e.g. terrorist attacks. Despite this, the messaging from the government was clear, that the system would only be used in rare cases.

The UK is by no means the first country to roll our this type of alarm system. The US and Japan have a well established systems and the Netherlands have rolled out their system in 2012. If you live in Amsterdam, you are even subject to tests by the emergency system twice a year. This way, the Dutch government makes sure everyone is familiar with the sound of the alarm.

Rolling out the alarm for weather-related emergencies is an act of rare foresight by the UK government. Many of these events can be predicted some time, that is days or hours, in advance providing valuable time to get people to safety. But communication between the forecasters and the public can be patchy. The floods in Western Europe in 2021 were reasonably well forecast; the European Flood Awareness System sent out warnings to local areas multiple days in advance. However, a UN analysis of press coverage highlighted gaps in some of these information flows. This resulted in about 30% of people not being warned before the floods became dangerous. Most areas got evacuated too late and 184 people lost their lives in the floods. This is was a preventable tragedy.

So should you turn the alarm off? I would strongly urge you not to. The UK has seen many extreme events in the last years alone. These ranged from flash floods to record-shattering heatwaves and even to wildfires. As the climate crisis will sadly intensify over the next years and decades, getting an alarm on your phone to tell you to evacuate to a save place in these situations could well save your life in the coming years.