Dallas residents had the exciting feeling of trying to determine if nuclear war, The Purge® or if the Cowboys were magically awarded the Super Bowl was the cause of emergency system sirens ringing out throughout the city as midnight was rapidly approaching. Wheeee! Yay! Hot dog!
CNN reports that 156 of the emergency sirens went off around 11:40 on Friday night causing a chaos with Dallas emergency dispatchers and (understandably) putting residents on edge. According to the city’s managing director of public information Sana Syed, the activated sirens are believed to be the product of hacking. Local hacking, no less.
“It does appear at this time it was a hack, and it does appear this came from the Dallas area,” said Syed.
Current events haven’t exactly made the scream of an emergency system loads of fun at any time of day and between 11:40 and 3:00 a.m. dispatchers were flooded with calls. Roughly 4,400 calls were placed with folks seeking to reach emergency personnel. The prospect of those sirens being anything from a tornado to a terrorist attack (and the assorted panic that ensues) definitely places this hack beyond the simple prank realm. Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings has stated the city “will work to identify and prosecute” the person(s) behind the sirens getting set off.