Millions Sent Government ‘Red Alert’ Emergency Phone Siren and Message

The UK government activated the emergency alert system to issue red warnings to millions of mobile phone owners, forcing even devices on silent to sound a loud klaxon and automatically read out a message from London.

A red “danger to life” weather warning has been issued due to wind gusts of 90 miles per hour risking “flying debris and falling trees” and large waves battering the coasts in the United Kingdom covering West Wales and parts of South-West England. The Meteorological Office says the public should expect power cuts, phone outages, road and rail closures, and “Damage to buildings and homes, with roofs blown off and power lines brought down”.

The public are advised to ensure loose items outdoors are secured, doors securely fastened, and to stay indoors as much as possible when the storm arrives overnight into Saturday. “If you do go out, try not to walk or shelter close to buildings and trees”, it is stated, and in cases where homes are known to have chimneys that are in poor condition “move beds away from areas directly below them”.

State broadcaster the BBC notes “around three million” people in Wales and South West England received an emergency alert on Friday night, sent to every mobile phone connected to the 4G or 5G network in the impacted area. On compatible handsets, a loud claxon noise played, with the government able to override the device’s setting to play loudly even if it was set to silent.

On phones capable of text-to-speech, the content of the message was played out loud after the klaxon noise.

The message is the largest use of the emergency warning system so far, which has only been engaged a handful of times before. According to the government’s archive of emergency alerts, it has been tested in various parts of the country four times since 2021 but used only twice for a real emergency.

One of these was because of an unexploded Second World War bomb found in a built-up area in February of this year, and again in May for a river flooding in Cumbria.

The United Kingdom once had an extensive physical emergency warning system, a legacy from the Second World War when cities and towns across the country had air raid sirens to warn of coming German bombers. This system was maintained and developed during the Cold War to warn of impending nuclear attack, but has now all but vanished, with working alarms only functioning near military bases, prisons, and in areas prone to flooding.

One of the greatest failures of emergency warning in British history was the North Sea flood of 1953, a sea storm surge which swamped sea defences and killed over 300 people. The surge came at night and the storm which preceded it had already damaged telephone and power lines, which made warning many people who lived remotely impossible, leading to scores — many of them elderly — drowning in their sleep.