Signboards cause lockdown after displaying false alarm

Jul 1 2009 - 4:06pm | Megan Holt

A technological malfunction put the J.C. Kellam Administration building on lockdown at the end of May when digital signboards displayed an erroneous message that a gunman was in the building.

Texas State administrators and BRG Precision Products’, the company that manufactures the signboards, disagree as to who is at fault.
According to Robert Campbell, sergeant of university special projects, university police officers responded to a call reporting a weapon in the

JCK building on May 29. The report was issued after signboards on the third and ninth floors displayed a message reading: “Lockdown, lockdown. There is a person with weapon in building. Lock the doors. Stay away from windows.”

“When I first saw the message, I thought, ‘that doesn’t seem right,’ said Joanne Smith, vice president for Student Affairs. “That wasn’t the format for a message we had agreed on.”

BRG manufactures the wireless moving message displays with 16 pre-programmed emergency messages. Smith said the university had specifically asked BRG not to include the pre-programmed messages before they were sent to Texas State.

“All devices store a message one way or another to speed up processes,” said John Bode, president of BRG Precision Products. “The board messages must have gotten caught up somewhere in the middle.”

Three of the people involved provided possible explanations for what could have caused the boards to display false messages:

Mark Hughes, assistant vice president for Technology Resources, said an electrical surge was responsible for the two boards displaying the test message of a gunman in the building.

Campbell said a data corruption lead to the malfunction and prevented him from “talking” to the boards with the master data center.

Bode said the boards did not malfunction, but the false message was sent by radio signals from the master data center incorrectly configured by university staff.

“There will be no lawsuit,” Smith said. “We worked cooperatively with (the company), and if one or two or three of the boards have stored messages, what can we do? It would be a question of who would sue who?”

Bode said BRG sent a response team consisting of engineers and technicians to the university to check the system and examine the boards.

“BRG initially helped install this system of more than 350 signboards,” Hughes said. “They came in and configured all the boards after the fact mainly, with no disrespect to the company, with great pressure from us. The company was responsive in clearing out the signboards and memory within hours of the incident.”

The company found no defects with the system and no equipment was replaced on arrival, Bode said.

“We did find the control program was not configured quite right so they made corrections there, and they also provided additional training to university staff,” Bode said.

Hughes said BRG re-trained the university staff to make sure they were comfortable with what to do in the future should the situation arise again.

Smith said she wants students, staff and faculty to know official UPD messages will contain, “TXSTATE ALERT” and always have “EMERGENCY” in front.

“The process to determine what the message would be was a big deal,” Smith said. “We wanted to use a format that people could recognize as an official UPD emergency message.”

Campbell sent an e-mail to occupants shortly after JCK was cleared from lockdown that said, “The message was probably sent to the BRG sign boards at JCK which was not from an official source.” UPD concluded no intrusion into the system took place.

“The system has seven layers of security within each process of control,” Hughes said. “This device is coded to that specific transmitter code. It’s not like someone could log into it and send out false messages.”

The university learned about BRG from other universities that use its signboards.

Rick Bishop, director for Network Operations, said the signboards are not only good for sending campus wide messages, but they are also a solution to the synchronized clock problem on campus.

“Now we have a high comfort level with this system,” Smith said. “We wanted to be sure we have complete control in every situation. We are 99.99 percent sure this won’t happen again.”

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