What you mention makes me frustrated, as it also signals the infrastructure is so underdeveloped even moderate rain grinds daily life to a halt: kids don't go to school if rain is forecast. We need to elevate our professionalism in Spain and not accept African-level infrastructure in the 21st century. It's really sad within one continent we have countries producing AI and photon computing, and others can't even figure out how to put gutters and rain drains.
This is not what it is. The infrastructure isn't THAT bad.
Government officials are terrified of taking the blame for another Valencia style flooding catastrophe so any hint of rain blasts the mobile phone emergency system. Once the alert has been sent the officials can feel safe in the knowledge that they've done something.
And ES-Alert is all or nothing. All calm or end-of-the-world. There is no option to send moderate level warnings, the ones that can be disabled. It always uses level 1, even if EU-Alert also defines 2-4. Population can not act as filter like a farmer chatting with non-farmers and saying "tomorrow I have to move the cows because the warning".
To be fair, these messages we receive about impeding heavy rainfall links to the weather service which does group things into yellow/orange/red warnings, so you can see if it's actually so important or not.
But yeah, this is after the "EVERYBODY IS ABOUT THE DIE" sound alarm that triggers on everyone's phone at the same time, then you get see that they're warning about an orange weather warning, or something like that.
Is it ideal? Not really, but better than nothing. In Maresme-area we have serious flood-risk almost every time it rains, as it fucking pours when it rains, and the warnings seemingly actually save lives today.
Full alerts for everything create alarm fatigue. People will ignore them, like in the wolf tale. Maybe figure ways to disable it completly, level 1 too. Faraday cage as last resort, "let's sleep and to hell if I die".
Getting a maximum level message and then having to check another thing is not the best way to do it. The messages should be useful without further checking. In case of phone network overload, they can be the only thing the user can read.
Based in the description of levels for EU-Alert, Spain could be using it wrong. Evacuation orders are under level 2. Multiple levels are there to prepare people and give enough time in advance. It also means politicians should be less terrified to use it, as long as they use the full range avaliable. Not everyone will enable all 2-4. It will depend on how many times they are abused and how nasty the sound is for the minor levels... (checks wiki) same for 1-4 seems common... which is an oversight of the standard. EU should correct that, or all phone makers workaround it by adding a third setting for levels 2-4: on, off, on-without-scaring-user.
> Full alerts for everything create alarm fatigue.
Agree, I don't think any country has "full alerts" for "everything", Spain certainly doesn't, although currently they're over-warning for the rain rather than the opposite, as "the opposite" last time ended up in a large catastrophe. I get it.
> Based in the description of levels for EU-Alert, Spain could be using it wrong
Shouldn't you first read descriptions about how Spain is using it actually, before arriving at such conclusions? Seems you're building this point of view based on anecdotes, mine included.
In the spirit of what we're discussing here, shouldn't you actually validate and verify before you share this at large?
