WSMV Channel 4 Blaring siren keeping neighbors awake, officials scrambling

Blaring siren keeping neighbors awake, officials scrambling

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Reported by Jennifer Johnson - email
NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) -

The Nashville Fire Department is looking into the possibility that hackers may have gotten into an emergency system designed to keep the city safe.

A tornado siren in East Nashville has been going off at all hours of the night for about a week, but that's not the end of the bizarre tone.

It sounds less like a tornado siren and more like something out of a sci-fi flick.

Everyone expects the alarms to go off day or night whenever there is an emergency, but this they did not expect.

"It's the Close Encounters sound, that everybody would associate with Close Encounters. But it's in a continuous loop. It would never stop," said Inglewood homeowner Mike Drudge.

Morning, noon and night, the sound stops and starts. Last weekend, it blasted at 2:30 a.m. for more than two hours.

"It's one thing for it to happen at six in the evening, or when you're having your morning coffee. But at two in the morning," Drudge said.

Nashville Fire officials say a local electric company has worked on the alarms three different times in the past week. They are worried if the problem doesn't get resolved soon, people will become complacent.

"It's almost like crying wolf, we used to hear that a lot. It's the same old complaint, it's same old complaint. Then people tend to forget about it," said Nashville Fire Assistant Chief Charles Shannon. "We don't want our public to do that."

Meanwhile, neighbors will have to endure the unpleasant and often poorly-timed warnings.

"It sounds kind of like a merry-go-round sound," said Inglewood homeowner Donnie Masters.

And they will have to hop that a real emergency doesn't strike while they are ignoring the false alarms.

"What good does it do if everybody ignores it, because it's been going on for a week, and just goes on and on," Drudge said.

Officials at Stansell Electric say the siren blasts have been caused by a faulty component, and workers had initially replaced the wrong part.

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