In many ways, we’re blessed with having everything we need to know at our fingertips, and nearly everyone is able to access the internet and emergency warnings.
There’s no doubt in times of need, such as during the flooding of the past two weeks, some of these warnings saved lives and allowed people to evacuate safely.
But how many warnings is too many?
During the heights of the floods, the amount of information coming in was overwhelming.
My phone, like many others, was pinging with messages from people asking if I was safe, hoping I was well.
I’d hardly have been alone in making lots of phone calls, which is a hazard of my profession, with people trying to find out if their businesses, sporting clubs and homes were still above water.
Adding upwards of 50 notifications from the VicEmergency app a day was overwhelming. It was too much.
Through the peak of the flood, the warnings we wanted to watch out for were emergency warnings, telling people to evacuate now or that it was too late to leave.
Those notifications came through, but so did the notifications about incident call-outs, which normally alert people to fires, accidents and other emergency incidents.
In among 45 notifications about an incident of a flood within 25km of my home, it was easy to miss the five notifications stating whether we should be evacuating or if it was too late to leave.
I evacuated early, an hour after the first evacuation warning was put in place. But I know many people who missed those notifications among the avalanche of incident call-outs.
It was confusing and overwhelming for me — someone in their 20s who lives half my life with phone in hand.
I can’t fathom how confusing, confronting and scary it might have been for people who don’t speak English as a first language, if at all, or for people who are elderly and don’t use phones often, to suddenly have this device buzzing through dozens of warnings an hour.
To get 25 notifications in two or three minutes for single incidences of flooding when large parts of Shepparton and Mooroopna were under water was worse than useless.
I know people who turned the notifications off. Some of those people missed emergency evacuation warnings because of it.
We’re lucky that thanks to the incredible work of emergency service workers and volunteers off the street that no-one in Shepparton lost their life over it.
I don’t have a solution — the closest I can come to one is to change the notifications so emergency evacuation warnings stand out more than call-outs for isolated incidents.
Maybe allow people to have more control over the notifications they can see? Or downgrade some call-outs during emergencies?
I’m not sure, and I’m grateful we have the warnings we do, but something needs to be done to temper the information overload.