Government Issues UK Mobile Emergency Alert Over Wildfire Risk
The UK government may have surprised a few people just after 7pm tonight after using the Emergency Alerts service via mobile network operators to send out a national warning about the “very high risk of wildfires nationally“, which advises people across the country to avoid undertaking any activity that could start a fire.
Generally speaking the advice in the alert is somewhat common sense and there may well be some debate about whether the current circumstances justified sending one. You can see a Summary of Past Emergency Alerts on the government’s official website.
Recipients (most of us) of the message will typically experience 10 seconds of a loud siren sound blaring out at you while your phone vibrates and displays the message, unless you press OK to stop it sooner. In this case most of those we spoke to received the latest message twice in fairly quick succession.
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Andy Burnham, UK Prime Minister, said:
“This evening, an Emergency Alert has been sent to people across England and Wales as the wildfire risk remains very high. The request came directly from Fire and Rescue Services.
I was in Stourbridge today and saw first-hand the devastating impact these fires have had on people’s homes and lives.
Our priority now is to keep everyone safe and prevent more fires from starting.
During this period of extreme heat, I’m asking everyone to take extra care. Please do not light any fires in gardens, the countryside or other open spaces, including parks, moorland and wooded areas.
Our firefighters and emergency responders are working around the clock in incredibly difficult conditions.
We can all help them. Please take the Emergency Alert seriously and follow the guidance in place.”
The alerts themselves are broadcast from cell towers in the vicinity of an emergency (they don’t need your phone number for this to work) and will only ever come from the Government or emergency services. Such alerts are a free one-way secure communication and do NOT reveal anyone’s location or collect personal data.
However, some people may wish to opt out of the emergency alerts system (e.g. victims of domestic abuse or those likely to be driving on the day), which can be done by going into your phone’s settings – search this section for “emergency alerts“, “wireless emergency alerts” or “emergency broadcasts” – and then turning off “severe alerts“, “operator alerts“, “test alerts” and or “extreme alerts“. But we have found that these specific options don’t always exist, and Android users could also try this method (further details):
- Open your phone calling app
- Use the keypad to enter *#*#2627#*#*
- Search your settings for ‘emergency alerts’ and turn off ‘test alerts’, ‘exercise alerts’, ‘operator defined’ and ‘operator alerts’
Hopefully it goes without saying that you should NOT read or respond to an emergency alert when you are driving or riding a vehicle (this is illegal). Find somewhere safe and legal to stop before picking up your phone and reading the message.
Copy of the 14th August 2026 Alert
Emergency Emergency Alert
Issued by the UK Government
There is a very high risk of wildfires nationally. Residents, landowners and visitors should not undertake any activity that could start a fire, including disposable barbecues, firepits, garden incinerators or fireworks. Even a small flame can rapidly develop into a major wildfire placing lives, homes, businesses and emergency responders at risk.
Follow official updates and report signs of fire immediately by calling 999. Search gov.uk/alerts for more information.
Sent by the UK government at 7:01pm on Friday 14 August 2026
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Boy who cried wolf much?!
Yes, I think there’s always a risk of using it too much and thus people will become less receptive to it.
They’d have been better off doing bulk SMS or something with a lower priority imo and saved EAS for genuine emergencies
I think they used it as an excuse to see if the “fixes” to the last failure worked. Clearly they did not. 🙂
If you’d been in the vicinity of two wildfires yesterday (as I was), and if you’d had local teenagers last weekend setting fire to oak logs in a firepit (the surroundings of the fire were well policed, apparently; but if you’ve ever watched an open oak fire you will know how much it can spit and send embers many tens of metres from the source, to maybe smoulder in a tree or in grassland and burst into life hours later), and if you’d been in the vicinity of the moronic young adults lighting a BBQ at the eclipse party earlier in the week then I think most would agree it’s past high time an alert like this was issued. This may not have been the original intention of the alert system, but as we are often told, a lot of these teenagers and young adults today do not appear to watch/read much in the way of traditional media that the warnings have gone out on. They now have zero excuse.
To be fair, the last UK wide emergency alert issued was back on the 7th of September 2025, and that was the test alert so I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s being overused as such, but time will tell, I guess…
There was a localised alert about a RED warning regarding wind on the 8th of January 2026. Most historical alerts seem to be localised and regarding RED warnings for wind, and a few localised alerts for flooding.
Wildfires are a stated reason for the issuance of emergency alerts, so this alert was within the stated use cases of the system. It’s being reported that ~600 wildfires have been detected in the UK in the past 48hrs, and the military is now starting to be deployed to assist with firefighting efforts.
So far in the UK, there have been 75 wildfires greater than 30ha detected, corresponding to a burned area of 24,672ha (246.72 km2) – figures from EFFIS – the European Forest Fire Information System. This, and the total number of wildfires below 30ha detected this year in the UK is… not ideal. So, I’d probably give a pass to an alert that is attempting risk minimisation to life, the environment, property, and the safe functioning of emergency responders. It’s likely not possible to limit this alert to a specific region, given the elevated wildfire risk is kind of everywhere in the UK at the moment.
I don’t suppose the owners of the 19 houses destroyed by fire in Stourbridge would consider the alert was unwarranted.
I think it’s justified tbh. So much parched vegetation around at the moment. By the time you get into a situation like Stourbridge it’s already too late. Only takes one idiot.
Just had to peel myself off the ceiling after this alert went off
This is NOT what the EMERGENCY system is meant to be used for. It’s for IMMEDIATE threats to life, NOT advisories. I just turned it off on all my devices’ settings because it disrupted my entire household with several devices BLARING like there was a nuclear attack or something! Which I would’ve been totally okay with it there was an actual threat!
Sorry but this is how the alert system is used worldwide, I used to get alerts in Canada to tell me the Highway was closed due to severe snow or icing and these came through TV (Satellite and Cable), over FM and Satellite radio and on mobile devices.
Unfortunately people are so damn stupid that they think something like having a silly disposable BBQ on in the middle of dry grasslands such as the Cairngorms is fine, they obviously need reminding not too.
People don’t moan about roadside signs saying as such, so why the complaints on the technology that disrupts your lives constantly anyway.
Besides anyone with commonsense will have turned off emergency alerts anyway so kinda a mute point.
legit thought the missiles were about to start raining down.
nope, don’t use disposable BBQs. Sigh.
proof any of the wildfires were started by these BBQs? none.
absolutely not what this system should be used for IMHO.
@anon -Didn’t actually realise they put a ban in place on these BBQ’s now, however “Several major wildfires have been linked to disposable BBQs, including blazes in Macclesfield, Cannock Chase, and London, with research indicating over 1,600 fires were caused by barbecues in England between 2020 and 2024. “
To be fair, now I’ve thought a little more about this, there is a distinction between the UK system and one’s in operation abroad, for instance in other countries they grade them, so Yellow Warning, Amber Warning and Emergency Red. So yeah, maybe the UK still has things to learn, however learning when something has existed for such a long time is a silly notion.
Had a very similar alert to this about wildfires in South Korea while I was there, including the fact that setting the fires – deliberately or not – could lead to 2 years in prison and an approx £15,500 fine. I probably received an average 2 a day while over there including a missing person alert.
I agree. We assumed it was our fire alarm that had gone off. Had no idea the noise had come from my phone, which was charging in the kitchen at the time. After an hour of faffing around I concluded the fire alarm must have a sensor fault, so went online and bought replacement sensors.
Not the only ones to think it was a fire alarm. an elderly relative thought the same, rushed out of her home and fell over in the street. Luckily her neighbour had also rushed into the street, same reason, she thought her fire alarm had gone off, so was able to help.
We’ve now disabled the alert feature on our phones and got someone to do the same on our elderly relative’s phone. The wildfires and warnings have been all over the media for weeks. If the government needed to issue the highest level of warning to the population there is then they should have done it weeks ago. Everyone in the land must be aware of all the wildfires long before this, unless they’ve been living under a rock.
This was a good way to encourage a lot of people to turn severe and critical alerts off on the phones . . . .
Unfortunately, they failed again. This is what happens when you have a civil service committee made up of “Arts School students” running things. 🙂
The alert was sent at the request of the Fire and Rescue Services, not a committee of civil servants as you suggest.
Yup – first thing my entitled neighbour did was set up a throw away BBQ next to MY fence! – ffs
At first, I thought it was my Carbon Monoxide detector going off as that makes the same sound, until I realised what it was looked at it and cleared it.
I got three alerts, but at 8 pm, 8.35 and 8.37. Not at, or close to, 7pm. I am an O2 subscriber in the South Wsat
This particular emergency alert was broadcast on a rolling basis from 7:01pm onwards. It stopped being broadcast at 11pm. Given the alert was issued nationally in the UK, then it’s probably to be expected that it would take time to propagate throughout all mobile network masts, given the number of them out there.
For what it’s worth, I’m on EE in the SW and received it at 7:01pm and again just over an hour later.
The people who would start fires would ignore this message and the people who would not don’t need to be told this. This is like a warning saying don’t hold golf clubs in the air during a thunderstorm
You can’t be from the UK, there is entire industries built on telling people not to do the obvious, I’ve been in construction management for a couple of years and the toolbox talks that have to be briefed out to operations teams is ridiculous and worse these toolbox talks often follow these obvious things happening.
Given today, the system feels like they’re going to both over use it and underutilise it.
For example, keeping things vague, there was a massive fire near where I live where eventually information spread via the media, but you can’t presume everyone reads the news, even something basic like keep windows shut because the smell of smoke on it’s own may not alarm people in the summer and the smoke could be toxic.
Or even just unexpectedly bad weather, yes I check the weather but there’s a difference between reports of ‘hail’ and what turns out to be ‘1″ of hail that settles like snow’
Otherwise I feel like they should just keep it to immediate threats e.g. ‘wildfire in your area, evacuate immediately’ because you risk desensitizing people.
Lebara (vodafone) in Devon, I got it at 7pm and again 9pm?
I was driving my bus, and my watch started getting these alerts, also on my iphone it happened like 4 times, first time it scared me lol i though we are under attack
Lots of people have turned off the alerts on their phone because of this.
What a foolish abuse of the system. This is why I disabled it on my devices before they’d even tested it, I knew they’d use it for stupid things.
These really do not need to go out as level 2/3 alerts. The people who operate the system seriously need to reconsider their refusal to support silent level 4 alerts as used in other European countries if they are going to send out further advisories of this nature.
I don’t think this was justified. This lets should only be used when immediate positive action is needed to avoid death or serious injury. For example sending it to a small area if there is a wildfire nearby and residents might need to evacuate their homes.
What’s next? Announce the hosepipe bans this way?
It’s a sad reminder of just how many cretinous or entitled people we are forced to share the world with that an announcement like that is needed at all.
iD Mobile (3) Alert received at 21:58 in SCOTLAND!
I received the initial government alert at 7pm, as did my partner, and I fully support the use of these alerts. However, I then received another at 23:37 after I had gone to bed, and my partner received one at 02:29. We are both on the EE network. Two additional alerts during the night felt unnecessary, especially at such unsocial hours.
After speaking with neighbours this morning, it seems some people received the alert up to four times.
Turn them off then – I didn’t get 1
I live near Chester, about 1.5 miles from the Welsh border, and received two alerts, the first at 18:55 in Welsh (I don’t understand Welsh, despite having a 2nd gt grandfather who was born in Gwynedd). The second one came in English at around 19:00 – my wife thought they were both from the microwave – she didn’t think of looking at her phone.
Never got a single one on either of my connections – one is a MVNO on Vodafone and one is a MNVO on EE
A disposable BBQ would actually be quite nice here.
Why do owners of older phones like me not receive these Government Alerts. Are we to be condemned for not wasting our phones for newer unwanted models?
This is not what the system was designed or intended for, so not sure why they felt the need to send that alert out personally.
The system is designed to be used when there is an immediate threat to life in a certain mobile phone mast area. It’s not intended for Public Service announcements, which is really what it was.
In Essex I only received it once. Thankfully, and not the multiple times people are reporting.
My first thought is Russia to attack UK when the govt alert went off.
It does not work when using WiFi Calling.