Do you live in Cleveland Park or its surroundings? If you do, chances are good that much like this editor, you are a walking zombie today courtesy of a terrifyingly loud alarm that went off early this morning at the University of the District of Columbia.
The alarm — an ungodly combination of high-frequency buzzing and a brain-piercing pitch — began to sound between 5 and 5:30 a.m. this morning, lasting for about two hours before finally subsiding. Upon awaking to such clamor (and allaying my fears that Washington was under some sort of nuclear attack), I dialed 311. After 20 minutes on hold, the operator, whose brevity obviously implied that she had answered this same question from every other person in the area, said that the alarm was the result of a mechanical disruption at UDC, and that police and technicians were on the scene working on it.
There are several alternate explanations being reported, including NBCwashington.com’s version, which cites information from the “Department of Emergency Management” (we assume they mean HSEMA) as saying that the noise was coming from someone’s “tricked-out” house alarm on the 3500 block of Macomb Street NW. Pardon our skepticism, but unless that house was sided with megaphones, there’s just no way a single family residence was making that much noise.
In any case, if you see someone from Cleveland Park today, be gentle. They’re probably a couple hours behind on sack time.
UPDATE: Through Councilwoman Mary Cheh’s office, UDC has issued an apology for the disturbance. The alarm was not a part of the University’s security system; rather, the sound was, according to MPD Commander Matt Klein of the Second District, “a civilian alert system that had been installed…several decades ago” and which “UDC officials [thought] had been disconnected years ago.” The university required the assistance of Pepco technicians to disengage the alarm — which certainly explains the lengthy delay in shutting it off. The noise blared again this morning around 11:30 for about ten minutes. Engineers are still conducting tests to see how the alarm was actually tripped. The full text of UDC’s apology, after the jump.
