VicEmergency

Department of Justice & Community Safety, Victoria

About this app

VicEmergency is the official Victorian Government app for emergency warnings and information. Download VicEmergency, set up a user profile and watch zones to ensure you receive official warnings and information for areas that interest you.

Watch the VicEmergency video at www.youtube.com/channel/UCskGgVGdfEp1C3BMiiwAyzQ
To review support articles or submit a request, visit http://support.emergency.vic.gov.au

Main Features:
• Live incident map showing current warnings, planned burns and other types of incidents across Victoria.***
• Simple to create a profile and use watch zones that ensure you get official warnings for your local area. Warnings and information* are pushed out to a user's phone when issued by Victoria’s emergency services. 
• GPS integration to determine your current location** and surrounding incidents. 
• Emergency Warnings, Warnings, Advice and information as issued by Victoria’s emergency services
• Share incidents and warnings with friends and family.
• View forecast Fire Danger Ratings on the map.
• View today's and tomorrow’s Total Fire Ban status.

* Your device must have an internet connection to receive warnings and information issued by Victorian emergency services. 
** To view your current location, GPS must be switched on and location functionality enabled.
*** Map symbols represent the origin of the emergency, not its current location or spread.

The VicEmergency app is just one tool to assist you to access warnings and information about emergencies, however you should never rely on just one information channel. Emergency services use a range of other information channels including SKY TV, ABC local radio, some commercial and designated community radio stations, VicEmergency Hotline on 1800 226 226, VicEmergency website on www.emergency.vic.gov.au and VicEmergency Twitter and Facebook.

What's New in this Version?
• Addition of other types of emergencies e.g. flood, earthquake, storms, tsunami, shark sightings etc
• Addition of user profile so watch zones can be accessed across multiple devices
• Integration of user profiles and watch zones with the VicEmergency website
• Addition of landscape view for all screens
• Addition of custom tone for notifications
• Addition of edit function for all aspects of watch zones
• Addition of warning notifications by email

Are you getting a message asking Allow "VicEmergency" to access to your location? You need to allow access to see incidents and warnings for your current location. The steps for this will vary depending on your device, model and version of android, but should be similar to this:
• Open device settings
• Select applications
• Select manage applications
• Choose VicEmergency from the list
• Tick the ‘show notifications’ box at the top of the screen

Ratings and reviews

Great app for getting info. Terrible as a notification of emergencies in your area as the constant, perpetual, unending, sleep stealing warnings that I can't turn off left me ignoring everything in the end. How about an option to be notified when situations change/escalate rather than being told the same stuff over and over and over and over and over and over and over at all times and days? Constant noise is just noise. E: There are notification types that can't be turned off or modified Amy.

This app is like the boy that cried "wolf". It alerts me multiple times a day with false alarms and alerts that aren't relevant to my area. I can turn off some of these but then I won't be alerted when there is a real emergency. Plus some alerts like fire danger ratings cannot be turned off, so I need to uninstall or mute the app entirely, which again defeats the purpose of the app. I don't need to be reminded that it's Summer since that's the case 25% of the year.

I don't always find this is the most straight forward app to use or to quickly find relevant data. On occasion it seems to freeze up and becomes unresponsive. One suggestion would be to have the option to turn the map orientation. This would be particularly useful for you to find yourself in a situation to navigate around multiple fires in the same area. In a panic, map orientation is exactly the kind of thing that can flummox people, particularly when if you're unfamiliar with the area.

What's new

- Adopted the Australian Fire Danger Rating System which standardises our use of fire danger ratings nationally.
- Updated our base map to the latest Spatial Vision VicMap Book
- Improved compatibility with the latest devices