Completely agree. I was personally a little annoyed at this usage. There can actually be consequences for some people to have a very sudden, loud, intrusive noise.

What was extra stupid is that none of the media outlets really reported on the alert all read it out, or anything. So apparently the emergency alert system doesn't send through an automatic breakthrough into television and radio programming, which surely it should do.

So what they've demonstrated is yet again that the system still doesn't work properly.

They only brought in a ban on disposal BBQs today after dithering about it for ages.

A reluctance to do anything practical but they are very trigger happy in abusing an emergency alert system.

Even better, an hour or two after it was sent a local business set off fireworks. Fucking stupidity everywhere.

Felt like an underlining of their new policy to ban adjust the guidelines to voluntarily stop the use of disposable BBQs. They are under a lot of pressure to actually do some mitigation since water is running low and crops are failed but apparently this was the actual action, banning BBQs and alerting everyone to that new guideline!!!

Thanks, I didn't realise there was an option to disable it.

You'd think they'd save this klaxon style alert for imminent danger, not "don't use barbecues". What the hell.

All mine are swtched off.

They still come through in BC Canada. Doesn't care about the settings; they all play anyway.

Amber Alerts, Emergency Warnings, Tests, all of them play regardless.

There's been 6 here, since May this year. 2 of those were between 12am and 1am.

This proved they will just use it for announcing their latest damp squib policies so zero point keeping it on, they are only going to abuse it.

Yeah, I won't turn it off for a single unnecessary alert but if they keep using it for stuff like this I probably will.

Are they going to give us alerts to drive safely next?

What could go wrong

Even if you switch it off, you will get notifications most of the time because the gov can just enforce them to be received so you may aswell just re-enable it to be sure to not lose anything

Yep, we assumed incoming attack. Then saw it was nothing.

There were months of warning about the emergency alert system when it was introduced for exactly that reason, including widely-publicised instructions on how to turn them off.

However it does seem people still aren't getting that.

Turns out it was still hot.