The city of Dunwoody issued an apology Thursday after 27,000 metro Atlanta residents were woken up by an early morning freeze warning alert.
In a statement, the city said neighbors received calls or texts at about 4:15 a.m. Thursday alerting them to a freeze warning that did not go into effect until Thursday night. The alert went out through the Nixle Alert System, a service that sends out alerts on behalf of cities and public safety agencies.
“The Dunwoody Police Department manages the Nixle Alert System and is working with Nixle to investigate why an alert of this nature went out so early in the morning. This was an automatic alert and not one that involved police personnel,” the city’s apology said.
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About 1,500 people are signed up for Dunwoody’s Nixle alerts, but 27,000 got the freeze alert, Dunwoody police spokesman Sgt. Robert Parsons said. Many were not Dunwoody residents.
The erroneous warning went out because of a setting for emergency warnings that the police department has corrected, Parsons said.
“Please know that we are working to ensure all future alerts are restricted to citizen safety and emergencies as the system is intended,” the city’s apology said.
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