Emergency Alert

I have a pixel 3a and my wife has a somewhat newer Samsung something. Both screens were on but this was only a few minutes after the alert. John

So did I, scared the life our of me, thought Trump had pressed the big red button.

You can turn them off

Go to your settings and select the 'notifications' menu. Scroll to the bottom. Turn off 'severe alerts' and 'extreme alerts'.

On my phone settings/notifications/advanced settings/wireless emergency alerts/allow alerts, toggle to off

Berloimey! I was in the room with the phone at 21.15 when it happened all over again with whoops and whistles and klaxons and stuff. I suppose it did all that the first time but I just wasn't in hearing range at the time.

But leaving the phone lit up and running the battery down when you might need to use that same phone in the emergency they are warning you about? Is that joined-up thinking?

Nick

Hmmm. My wife's android phone scared the hell out of her by issuing that 'alert' (twice).

My iPhone[1] didn't utter a peep - and yes "Extreme Alerts" and "Severe Alerts" are both ON.

In message snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, at 21:22:44 on Fri, 14 Aug 2026, alan_m snipped-for-privacy@admac.myzen.co.uk> remarked:

I think they must be turned off on my two phones (both on latest Android and 5G), because I didn't get the audible alert. But I did receive a text alert.

The Law of Unintended Consequences? Anyway, that doesn't look right. Weren't the alerts supposed to be on the screen for only 10 seconds?

I didn't know they'd been an alert until I heard it mentioned on the news this morning. I turned off emergency announcements when they first stated that they were going to use them several years ago.

I suspect the wildfire alert was really a test of the nationwide alert system in case Putin launches the Zircons and Oreshniks against targets in the UK.

I got rudely awakened twice via my iPhone about an hour apart yesterday evening. On the other hand, my wife only got a single alert on her Android phone. Why pick on me ;-)

Will the advice be the same, if you smell smoke close your windows and check for local fires?

I suspect the message will be something along the lines of ”Put your head between your knees and kiss your arse goodbye” or possibly ”Anyone not on benefits will have to pay towards reconstruction”.

Thanks.

Note that there are ’supreme’-level warnings that can’t be turned off.

It was requested by the fire service.

A friend worked on them many moons ago. He said that if you weren't aware tehre was going to be an alert in advance, then *you* are who ti was meant for.

I thought I might have avoided all this chaos by having a 2/3/4G feature 'phone, but then yours was similar, if newer. Here, not a peep. And I am in East Anglia, which is suffering as much as anywhere in the country.

It only works on smartphones running Android 11 or higher (or iPhones running iOS 14.5 or higher). However, there are supposedly other ways that alerts can be sent to feature phones.

Well, I didn’t expect the alert to be requested by the Nuclear Ballistic Missile Early Warning System!

For the avoidance of doubt, my feature phone is a Nokia 110 4G which uses neither iOS or Android - perhaps that's why the display stayed on after the first alert.

I shut it down right after the second alert: obviously I ought to have let it run to see what happened but I'm not scientificy enough to think about doing experiments while somebody is applying a road drill to my eardrums.

Nick

I know these alerts are easy to turn off, but why do so?

This latest one has had no effect on me, as I had no intention of setting fire to my garden, but there might be an important alert one day.

For example, we spend a lot of time on the Norfolk coast, and it would be good to get a warning if the sea wall collapses.