Latvia's Rescue Service: Nearly 12% of Residents Don't Act on Cell Broadcast Alerts
A survey commissioned by Latvia's State Fire and Rescue Service shows that 11.7% of residents do not act on cell broadcast alerts because they believe the danger will not affect them. The service's chief called the finding worrying.
/nginx/o/2026/11/09/18026854t1h0f98.jpg)
Around 12% of people in Latvia do not act after receiving a cell broadcast alert because they believe the threat will not affect them personally. Mārtiņš Baltmanis, chief of the State Fire and Rescue Service (VUGD), told journalists this on Monday, 9 November, while commenting on a survey the service had commissioned. Cell broadcast is a system that sends official early-warning messages to mobile phones.
What the survey found
Research company Norstat polled 1,004 respondents online across Latvia in November 2026. Nearly 95% had received cell broadcast alerts, and 89.4% had received them several times.
More than half, or 51%, take the alerts seriously. Of these, 41.7% check additional information before acting, while 9.3% follow the instructions immediately. A further 24.4% pay attention but do not always consider it necessary to act, and 11.7% do not act because they think the threat will not affect them. Another 9% ignore the alerts or pay them no attention.
Explanations from the service and a psychologist
Baltmanis stressed that early warning is a privilege, as many countries have no such systems. He pointed to the 2021 floods in Germany and Belgium, which killed 157 people in total; one of the conclusions in Belgium was that no early-warning system existed. In his words, an alert is official and reliable information and does not need to be confirmed on social media or in the news. A cell broadcast is activated only when, for example, the National Armed Forces have verified information about a real threat.
Clinical psychologist Diāna Zande named information overload and alert fatigue as one reason people fail to react. She recommends a personal action plan: read the alert, and if it calls for immediate action, carry that out first and look for more information afterwards. She also suggests discussing within the family who will contact relatives.
This year residents of Latgale and Vidzeme have repeatedly received alerts about a possible airspace threat, and some drones have fallen and exploded in Latvia.
