Two North Texas cities whose outdoor warning sirens sounded early Tuesday morning say the systems were hacked.
The sirens in DeSoto and Lancaster went off around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. Around 6:30 p.m., the cities sent separate statements which said, after investigation, they determined the actions were intentional.
The city of DeSoto said its outdoor warning siren system was not operational following the hack.
Initially, city officials described the early morning sirens as a "malfunction."
"This went crazy," Herbert France of Lancaster said. "It kept going off and came back and went off again. I didn't know what was going on."
The city of DeSoto sent Code Red Alerts to its subscribers, letting people know there was no emergency.
"They went on for about 15, 30 minutes," said Ray Hubbard of Lancaster, who got up to check his TV and phone to see if there was severe weather. "Cause this is a tornado area... just want to make sure I'm not in the line of it."
Tweets about the sirens started to pop up on social media at about 2 a.m. Tuesday.
The sirens also went off in Glenn Heights, but the city had not commented as of 7 p.m. Tuesday. Police departments of all affected cities were investigating.
