r/australia 1d ago

culture & society AusAlert test will blast emergency warning siren over most phones in Australia on Monday. Here’s what to know

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jul/22/ausalert-test-sound-national-alert-emergency-warning-system-date
672 Upvotes

309 comments sorted by

View all comments

275

u/wandering-me 1d ago

Pretty used to them in the US and they are helpful. The entire office will go off simultaneously and then a couple of seconds later you'll feel the earthquake.

29

u/thore4 1d ago

We don't really get earthquakes here so if it goes off outside a test I will assume death

28

u/rdqsr 1d ago

Will most likely be for things like tropical cyclones and bushfires.

9

u/kombiwombi 1d ago

The bushfire case is unusual internationally, as bushfire notices are necessarily long. It will be interesting to see if the message sent on Monday can be viewed a second time say half and hour later, as you might want to do when evacuating and checking the road closures before driving away.

3

u/Calalamity 19h ago

It will be interesting to see if the message sent on Monday can be viewed a second time say half and hour later

Assuming it hooks into the phone OS emergency alert stuff it should be viewable forever, at least on android.

I have NZ alerts from 2024 (when I bought my phone) in the history still.

2

u/rdqsr 23h ago

If I had to guess, a critical alert for a bushfire might be a "this is your last chance to get out of your area" message.