Alarmed by the alarm: people react to ‘severe alert’ on phones over UK wildfires

Many complained online that piercingly loud tone was ‘overreach’ while others lamented lack of action on decarbonisation On Friday at 7pm, Thérèse Coffey was nine miles away from a nuclear power station when her phone made a loud, piercing and very worrying sound: it was a “severe” emergency alert. “Was expecting [a] much more specific alert, not a generic message on wildfires,” the former Conservative cabinet minister said on X. She wasn’t alone in being alarmed by the alarm sent to phones in…