From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishraise/sound the alarmraise/sound the alarmWARN especially British English to warn people that something bad is happening Neighbours raised the alarm when they smelled smoke. → alarm
Examples from the Corpus
raise/sound the alarm• When the First Lady looked in on him and discovered he was missing, she panicked and sounded the alarm.• The Big Three began sounding the alarm in a big way when January sales figures were reported.• Stewart dispatched a column sounding the alarm.• Volcanologist Pierce Brosnan and small-town mayor Linda Hamilton sound the alarm.• Fred Goodyear was so shocked that it was more than eight hours before he raised the alarm.• He sounded the alarm and the train stopped at St-Pierre-des-Corps, near Tours.• They have lost no time in sounding the alarm about an impending famine, which they say threatens 1.9m people.• He was one of the earliest to sound the alarm about the fate of churches and their contents. 