Residents welcome UAE move to soften missile alerts at night

UAE missile alert system

Residents in the UAE have welcomed a change in tone of emergency alerts that authorities send out during the night.

For Moataz, a Dubai resident, it was a welcome decision. An resident of Karama, he said the alert had jolted him and his family awake on the first night of the regional escalations.

“It was Ramadan, so all of us had gone to sleep early and when the alert came around 10.30pm, we all woke up,” he said. “My kids are 5 and 3 years old.

They started crying. It took me a while to soothe them and put them back to sleep. Since then, they have grown somewhat accustomed to the alert as we’ve had so many notifications but I’m glad that high alert tone will no longer be used at night.”

In a message on its social media accounts on Monday evening, the National Emergency, Crisis and Disaster Management Authority (NCEMA) said it would modify the sounds of alerts from the National Early Warning System.

From 10.30pm until 9am, the alert and safety message will use a standard text message tone. Messages will retain the high tone for alert and a standard text message sound during this time between, 9am to 10:30pm.

Fathima Mohammed, a resident of Abu Dhabi, said she appreciated the move. “I have my parents living with me and both are in their 70s,” she said. “I started taking the phone away from their rooms at night for the last couple of days, because the messages were causing them a lot of stress. The UAE government is doing everything possible to keep us safe and I really appreciate that. They care about even the minutiae of our discomfort.”

Health officials in the country have recommended residents ways to remain calm, and minimise sleep disturbance if woken up by the emergency alerts.

Listening to the people

Earlier, the alert and the safety messages each were played in a high tone — a detail that several residents went on social media to ask be changed.

Ash Young, a pilates instructor in Dubai, wrote on social media last week that while she was grateful for the alerts, she felt like the safety message could have been framed differently. The following day, she updated her stories: “It came through with a happy little text noise. They are taking care of us,” along with a screenshot of the messages.

Since the beginning of the US-Israel-Iran war, several countries in the Gulf have suffered missile and drone attacks by Iran. The United Arab Emirates is achieving most success in intercepting incoming ballistic missiles and drones, but falling debris of these interceptions has caused material damages as well as injuries and the death of four expatriates.

It is mostly during these strikes that residents in different areas of the UAE receive phone alerts, instructing them to take immediate cover with a blaring vibrating noise. After the threat has passed, they receive warnings that tell them they are safe.

Authorities notified residents that when they hear such alerts, it is critical to move away from windows, doors and open spaces. If they are driving when one comes through, they are ordered to keep on going until they arrive at their destinations.