The reason why a half dozen outdoor warning sirens went off in Fort Worth on Thursday still isn't known.
The city is still investigating the malfunction, and while it has eliminated some possible causes it is still investigating several others.
Around 6:20 a.m. Thursday, sirens at 1598 Ederville Road, 715 Highwoods Trail, 11997 Timberland Boulevard and the siren at either 2098 Flemming Drive or 5591 Eastland Street sounded, even though there was no emergency. The other two sirens, at 2091 Canton Drive and 7193 Beaty Street, not only sounded then, but did so again around 7 p.m.
"I grew up here in Fort Worth and I've learned since elementary school if that siren goes off there's something you need to watch out for," said Sam Austin, who lives down the street from the Canton Drive siren.
Austin said Thursday night the siren sounded multiple times. It led him and his wife to check the radar on their phones and on TV.
"It sure gets your attention, and it's pretty annoying after it goes off three or four times in a row," Austin said. "You could tell it was malfunctioning because it would start and stop immediately. So, I knew there was something wrong."
The city's emergency management office still doesn't know exactly what that something is yet, but continues to try and re-create the problem to figure it out.
"We have not been able to determine that at this point in time, but we do feel that it's some kind of communications problem where potentially one of the encoders might have malfunctioned and erroneously sent some communications to the sirens to activate," said Juan Ortiz, the city's emergency management coordinator.
The encoder is a device that sends a radio signal to the sirens when they're activated. Both of the city's encoders were checked and don't appear to be the source. All six of the sirens were checked and they're not the culprit either. Ortiz said having six sirens sound all at once is unusual. It's not unusual for a single siren to malfunction, as that can happen if water or an animal gets into the box.
On Friday, Ortiz said his staff was checking with neighboring cities who have a similar system from the same manufacturer to see if their encoders could have sent the signal.
"And we have taken measures to make sure no other siren activation will occur," Ortiz said.
Ortiz said the sirens have been put into what he likes to call a "sleep mode." The sirens will have to be woken up manually before they can sound an alert. The sirens are only sounded when city personnel set them off for various weather concerns or emergencies.
It's a sound residents near Eastern Hills Elementary don't want to hear again, unless it's really an emergency.
"I hope not. We like for those things to be reliable and accurate," Austin said.
Ortiz said the city takes the issue very seriously and wants to figure out the cause of the problem so that it won't happen again.
The city did send out text notifications to inform those signed up for its Nixle program that it was a false alarm. To learn more about how to register for the alerts, click here.
