HARTFORD -- It was a loud night in Dallas this past weekend, as a hacker got control of the city’s tornado sirens.
If you’ve ever heard tornado sirens, you know they can be terrifying. But typically, it’s just a few going off at a time during a severe weather event. Just before midnight on Friday night, all of the 156 sirens in the city of Dallas went off, sounding like a zombie apocalypse across the city.
Pretty much the entire city of 1.3 million people were awoken to the creepy apocalyptic sound. They blared for more than an hour as crews frantically worked to shut off the sound.
They finally got it to shut down on Saturday morning, and have finally completed some patch work as of Monday.
More than 4,400 emergency calls were made during that time as people wanted to know what was going on.
Dallas' Mayor Mike Rawlings said this was the work of someone outside of their system, and that even though it’s a slim chance they could find the perpetrator, they will try to bring that person to justice.
Social media blew up with people poking fun at the situation. I guess there’s not much else to do when you can’t sleep in the middle of the night.
The city of Dallas has been hacked before. Last memorial day, Texas' DOT signs displayed messages like “party hard ya’ll” among other more controversial things.
The investigations will continue to find the hacker or hackers responsible for those sirens ringing out, but in the meantime, Dallas residents will just have to treat every warning as real.
Washington Post and Dallas News contributed to this story.