Florida City Broadcasts Alert: Beware Power Outage — And Zombies

LAKE WORTH, FL — A Florida city wants to make one thing clear to residents: No, zombies are not walking around, contrary to what an alert said early Sunday.

Ben Kerr, the public information officer for Lake Worth, went into full damage control Tuesday after the city mistakenly blasted a message warning residents of power outages and "extreme zombie activity."

The alert read: "Power outage and zombie alert for residents of Lake Worth and Terminus. There are now far less than seven thousand three hundred and eighty customers involved due to extreme zombie activity. Restoration time uncertain."

You read that correctly. Zombies.

The word “Terminus” seemingly references a city in AMC's hit TV show "The Walking Dead," a show about — you guessed it — zombies.

The message was broadcast around 1:45 a.m. Sunday, the Palm Beach Post reported. A local Facebook page called Lake Worth Live said the city later indicated the message was a mistake.

“We are looking into reports that the system mentioned zombies,” Kerr said in a Facebook post. “I want to reiterate that Lake Worth does not have any zombie activity currently and apologize for the system message.”

Kerr says nearly 7,900 customers were impacted.

WPBF-TV reported that city officials confirmed the message originated from the city, but that the system had seemingly been hacked.

The system automatically broadcasts an alert message in case of an outage, the officials said. But it looked like someone had altered this particular message.

The culprit remains unknown, but the city doesn't believe the person is a current or former city worker.

Zombie alert in Lake Worth!!

Seriously.

The city sent out a zombie alert early Sunday morning.

This is the alert.

The city tells me they’re not sure how it happened.

I’ll tell you their explanation @WPBF25News at 6. pic.twitter.com/1waeuwdX0G
— Ari Hait (@wpbf_ari) May 21, 2018

Photo credit: Shutterstock/Borkin Vadim