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| EARLY APRIL FOOLS JOKE NOT APPRECIATED BY NLR RESIDENTS |
Like every other city that has an early warning system, North Little Rock tests their sirens at noon each Wednesday.
But on November 7th, they went off at 11:00 a.m.
NLR residents looked up in the sky to see if Korean missiles were raining down or a tornado was ripping across town.
No missiles or tornado's, just a simple screw-up; someone forget to adjust the early warning systems clock for Daylight Savings Time.
"We did miss the time change," explains city communication director Nathan Hamilton. "This year we switched to an automated test system where we've got new sirens; they're state-of-the-art type stuff. And the test is automatic. This is the first [time] we're using them where there was a time change, and we hadn't accounted for that.
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| NATHAN HAMILTON - NLR COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR |
"So, good. I'm glad we do the test. We figured that out."
Famous last words.
Because this past Wednesday, the sirens went off at 10:00 a.m. instead of noon.
Can you say "doofus"?
"We thought we made the fix, but the programming, actually the software, was wrong, Hamilton says, adding, "This is one where it wasn't actually user error."
Right. Let's see if anyone in that department wants to take a drug test.
Hamilton sheepishly confessed, "But we're absolutely responsible for that; we're taking ownership on that."
And quickly. Hamilton says, "When I heard it going off at 10 o'clock, I immediately jumped on Facebook -- I had Facebook open on my phone, writing that post before the sirens were even finished."
Hamilton tried to play off the mistake with a post on the city's Facebook page: "Our bad. Yep, we messed up on the time change last week and made the one hour fix going the wrong way this week. We'll get it right next week. On a good note ... this is why we do the test, to work out the kinks!"
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Dog Town reference explained here.
For those too lazy to click the link:
