TCU students were awoken early Thursday morning due to a malfunction with the Fort Worth Outdoor Warning System.
The malfunction occurred at approximately 1:35 a.m., according to the Fort Worth Emergency Management Office, and affected the entire city of Fort Worth, which includes the TCU campus.
A brief statement from the Forth Worth EMO said,
At 1:35 AM the Fort Worth Outdoor Warning System was inadvertently activated. The system has been reset and the city is investigating to determine the cause of the activation. There is no emergency event at this time.
According to the Fort Worth National Weather Service, they do not activate the sirens, but did notify the appropriate city officials that there may have been a potential malfunction with the system.
Outdoor sirens went off all around FTW at 135 am. We do not activate the sirens, but we did notify the proper city officials. #txwx
— NWS Fort Worth (@NWSFortWorth) October 18, 2012
Moments after the sirens malfunctioned, students took to Twitter, expressing a mixture of confusion and frustration.
Um are those tornado sirens? I can see the stars. #someonescrewedup
— Jansen Harrison (@JansenHarrison) October 18, 2012
Sirens going off @tcu I'm curious as to what was going on.
— Chris Kinder (@ItsChrisK) October 18, 2012
Each Wednesday at 1 p.m., the City of Fort Worth tests the Outdoor Warning System and according to their Twitter feed, a test was planned for Wednesday. However, it did not take place.
The City of Fort Worth reminds you that a test of the Outdoor Warning System (sirens) is taking place today at 1 PM nixle.us/83FAX
— Fort Worth OEM (@FWOEM) October 17, 2012