Connor BlandThe British Government has confirmed that a new emergency alert system will be tested nationwide for the first time on St Georges day (23rd of April).
This new system is being implemented to send alerts to the nation’s mobile phones where there may be a danger to people’s lives due to unforeseen events such as flooding.
Each person’s mobile device located within the danger area will receive an alert that is a loud siren that will lock the mobile device until the ‘dangerous situation’ has been acknowledged by the user.
Alerts of life threatening events will be sent directly by emergency services or the Government themselves to cut out the ‘middleman’ news companies to enable people to be alerted quicker and more efficiently. Most people are generally behind the idea however not everyone is convinced of its necessity and that it could do more harm than good..
One of the problems people have with it is that according to www.publictechnology.net it is set to cost at least 16 million pound over the next five years just to run the system, despite the fact that in theory the entire nation could turn off the emergency alert system notifications via their mobile settings meaning that it could be seen as a waste of time and money on an unused system. This wouldn’t matter if people were going to use the system but a lot of people have suggested it is useless due to being able to find the information just as fast via the news.
Another problem people have discussed via social media is that people who experience mental health conditions such as PTSD and children could all be heavily affected by the experience and it could be very harming for these people. A charity who support people with PTSD (PTSDuk) gave advice to people who experience the condition, saying they wouldn’t recommend to turn off the notification.
An unusual claim on twitter was that the system is being implemented to scare the general public twitter account ‘UnityNewsNet’ said this…
With these problems in mind I discussed the Emergency Alert System with UK based student journalists Toby Lenton and Michael Edwards.
