"I just assumed since there was no alerts on the television or on the radio, that it was a malfunction. But it was very irritating. I did get up and I called the police department and the lines were very busy," said Bill Reedy, heard siren.
The malfunction had most residents wondering if severe weather was on the way or something worse.
"I knew it was a warning signal, but a tornado didn't occur to me because I knew the weather was clear, and I'm thinking are we getting bombed or something?" said Carolyn Bozek, heard siren.
Local police and fire eventually stopped the alarm by cutting power to the malfunctioning unit after they determined no bad weather was in the area.
Village officials are not only requesting the equipment's manufacturer to inspect the siren, but they are also looking into what went wrong with their system of notifying residents about nonemergency situations.
"We're going to be looking at our website and our cable channel and figure out how we can do perhaps a better job of getting out that type of information in the early morning hours," said Doug Kozlowski, Village of Downers Grove.
Village officials say that this has never happened before.
The Village of Downers Grover tests their systems the first Tuesday of every month around 10:30 a.m. so some residents were accustomed to the alarm.
