Raed Arafat responds to dissatisfied Romanians that RO-Alert is ruining their sleep: “There is no possibility of separation”
Secretary of State Raed Arafat, head of the Department of Emergency Situations, made some clarifications after several people complained in the public space that they received an RO-Alert message at 4:20 am.
Head of DSU, Raed Arafat PHOTO gov.ro
According to the head of the DSU, the RO-Alert is transmitted when a red weather code is issued, based on an approved procedure.
“The time at which the message was sent was a limit, when some of the residents were leaving or preparing to leave for work. It is difficult to say that you do not want to disturb, without taking into account the people who are not in their homes, who are driving on the streets or who are about to leave for work”he wrote on his Facebook page.
He also stated that the RO-Alert messages are sent based on the information received from the ANM and are issued at the dispatcher level, without additional approvals being required. The red code of snow and blizzard implies dangerous phenomena, such as fallen trees, broken electric cables, detached objects or other major risks for the population.
“We understand the situation and apologize for the discomfort caused to some people, but we ask for understanding, because the alerts are sent to protect those who are or may be exposed to risks. There is no possibility to separate, in a red code area, people who are safe in their homes from those who are or will be exposed, without knowing the real situation”Raed Arafat added.
Regarding the sound emitted by RO-Alert, Arafat said that “it is a standard one and cannot be changed at present. However, there are steps to introduce a differentiated sound signal, less intrusive, for situations that occur during the night and do not require waking up the entire population, but only informing people at risk of exposure”. The implementation of this depends on the collaboration with the main system operators, namely Android and iOS, according to the head of the DSU.
“At the same time, I would like, in this way, to thank all the colleagues who intervened, from the MAI structures and from the structures of the other central and local authorities, but above all I want to thank the citizens who collaborated during the period in which we were under the orange and red codes”he concluded.
The claims come after, on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, at 04:20, millions of phones simultaneously emitted the RO-Alert sound. The message announced a weather alert: Snow code red. Reactions from the online environment were dominated by dissatisfaction, as the RO-Alert system was used, in the perception of many, at maximum intensity for a risk considered trivial.
