Emergency Sirens Malfunction in Parts of Tarrant County

Fort Worth's Office of Emergency management is reviewing a siren malfunction discovered during a regularly scheduled test of the system Wednesday.

Forty-five sirens malfunctioned and continued to sound long after they were signaled to shut off, according to Emergency Management Coordinator Juan Ortiz.

The Fort Worth Fire Department manually turned off 20 of the sirens, and the other 25 were silenced remotely. Some sounded for about an hour.

Ortiz said crews have identified a programming issue and believe they already have a solution.

Getting numerous reports of tornado sirens sounding around FW. No emergency at this time. FD working to shut down sirens
— Fort Worth Fire Dept (@FortWorthFire) June 24, 2015

"It's an issue of they can't receive our cancellation notice – in what order. There's a couple of cancellation notices we do," Ortiz said. "One is to tell the siren to stop. Another is to put the siren to sleep."

"The command to cancel might not have been heard by some of the sirens, then they received the go to sleep, which allows the siren to remain stuck on the last command successfully received," Ortiz added.

@NBCDFW almost 30 mins of siren in dw fort Worth Benbrook area. Any clue why?
— JMPACK (@laughingdork) June 24, 2015

Ortiz said the sirens that malfunctioned were not concentrated to a specific area, rather they were spread across the city.

"We believe that what happened, they remained with the command to sound," Oritz said. "Our procedure that we have identified will allow us to ensure that the shut off command is received by the siren by sending it multiple times before we tell the siren to go to sleep."

In all, 153 sirens are included in the system, and Ortiz said instances like on Wednesday are the reason they run tests so often. It's also the reason tests are only conducted on clear days when there is no threat of severe weather.