Officials in Dallas announced on Saturday the more than 150 emergency alarms that sounded throughout Friday night into Saturday morning were the work of a hacker.
USA Today reports 156 emergency alarms were repeatedly turned on for more than 90 minutes, as emergency management workers struggled to find a way to stop the blaring alarms.
On Saturday, Rocky Vaz, the director of the Dallas Office of Emergency Management, said city engineers identified the source of the sounding alarms to be a hacker in the Dallas area. Each siren, which is used primarily to warn the city of severe weather, was set off 60 times throughout the night. More than 4,400 residents called 911 to report the alarms, extending the normal wait time for callers from 10 seconds to about six minutes, according to USA Today’s report.
Sana Syed, the managing director of information for the city of Dallas, praised emergency management workers for their handling of the chaotic event at a press conference on Saturday.
“We’re extremely grateful to fire dispatch and to the Office of Emergency Management,” Syed said. “These guys came in the middle of the night and did everything they could to get every single siren off by 1:20 a.m. So, within an hour and a half, about, we turned off the entire system.”
UPI reports city officials do not know how the hacker was able to gain entry to the city’s emergency alarm system.
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