by Amanda Hara
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- For ten years, a weather siren in Nashville has worked like a charm. But now, it appears to have gone rogue and Emergency Management officials are scratching their heads while neighbors fume.
Instead of playing the normal high pitched whine to warn of bad weather, the weather siren in Inglewood, out front of the old Litton Middle School building is randomly playing Westminster Chimes.
Neighbors said it's sounded off in the middle of the night, the middle of the day, and whenever it pleases.
The first time neighbor Alan Peters heard the noise, he tracked it down to the weather siren.
"There was an engineer there and I said what is going on why is it doing this? He said I don't know why it's doing this. I helped install this five years ago and I didn't even know it could make this noise," said Peters
Emergency Management Officials suspect a hacker or prankster is to blame. They've responded three different times, replaced every single part, and still no luck. Just a neighborhood now ignoring the siren that cries wolf.
"We don't want people to not pay attention to what's going even though it is annoying," said Chief Charles Shannon.
Alan Peters said he was paying attention to the irony.
The engineer builds robots at Vanderbilt University, and for him, this was nothing more than robot revenge.
"When machines get more intelligent and more autonomous they will sometimes do things that drive us crazy," he said.
If the siren has to be turned off again, the Office of Emergency Management will use P-A systems to alert neighbors in the event of a weather threat.
If a hacker is found responsible for this, they could face charges.
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