Talk about a rude awaking, Dallas residents were treated to the sweet sounds of 156 emergency sirens in the early morning hours. Ok, maybe not such a sweet sound, but the most important part is that we now know the sirens work…

(NEWSER) – “Dallas got a rather unpleasant wakeup call over the weekend: nearly 160 emergency sirens blaring throughout the city in tandem, in what Rocky Vaz, director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management, says was the result of hacking from “someone outside our system” but in or near the city, per the Dallas Morning News. The 156 sirens—which Reuters notes are used to warn about dangerous weather sweeping in—started screaming at 11:42pm Friday and weren’t completely turned off until 1:17am Saturday, going off for 90 seconds at a time at least 15 times, city rep Sana Syed says, per Courthouse News Service. Vaz told reporters an infrastructure hacking like this is a “very rare event” and that workers had to eventually power down the whole system when other methods of shutting off the sirens weren’t working, the New York Times reports.” [NEWSER]