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Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 9:46 pm
Phone glitch set off sirens
By Darcy Gray - The Hutchinson News - [email protected]
When multiple tornado sirens in and around Hutchinson began sounding at intermittent times a couple of weeks ago, some local residents were confused, even panicked. It took several days for area officials to learn it was actually residents who had accidentally sounded the sirens.
"The tornado sirens are set off by phone numbers," explained Mary Messamore, director of emergency communications for Hutchinson and Reno County. "Each tornado siren is assigned a secure phone number, and there are only three specific phones in the city that can be used to call and set off the sirens."
In the last week of August and the first days of September, AT&T's secure phone system controlling the sirens was affected by a "software glitch" that has since been fixed, according to Messamore. During that time, the phone lines for each of the sirens were no longer secure, she said.
"The lines were opened up, so anyone who dialed those specific numbers could set off the tornado sirens," Messamore said.
Officials think people accidentally calling a wrong number - the phone numbers assigned to the sirens were local numbers - set off the sirens, she said.
"The way the system is set up, the first ring means the siren will go off for one minute, the second ring means the siren will go off for two minutes, and so on ... ," Messamore said. "People were probably misdialing, and they would hear the phone keep ringing and ringing before they'd finally hang up."
The system is also set up so that city officials testing the tornado sirens can call just one phone number to set off all of them, she said.
"Thank God no one misdialed the number for all (the sirens)," Messamore said.
Steve Garza, the city's lead traffic signal technician and electrician, is in charge of working on the sirens and acknowledged the phone lines "trigger the equipment inside the siren itself." He said tornado sirens sounded in the Highlands neighborhood, at 11th and Plum, on Illinois Street in South Hutchinson, and at 23rd and Waldron near the hospital.
"It became a dangerous situation for people in the hospital who didn't know what was going on," he said. At first, officials suspected there was water on the phone lines or even ants, which have caused the sirens to unexpectedly sound in the past, Garza said.
"I was kind of chasing a ghost," he said. "The sirens would go off and they'd send me out to check the lines and things would be fine. "It was driving me crazy and it took a couple of weeks to figure out."
Garza said he used his own phone to call and "see if the system had been breached." That's when he realized the lines were no longer secure.
"We tested them to make sure they were secure and the first test failed," he said. "The next day we got a hold of the phone company and they finally got it fixed. A programmer fixed it."
Now, there are new, secure phone numbers assigned to the sirens. Messamore said AT&T's local resolution center fixed the problem. On Sept. 2, the city ran a final test of the sirens during the day to confirm the system was secure. That was the day city officials announced the sirens sounding at an odd hour was just a test.
"Once we were alerted to the issue, service was restored within 24 hours and at no time was the public at risk," said Marisa Giller, an AT&T spokesperson based in St. Louis. "We apologize if this caused alarm in the community."
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