Some Orange County residents were stunned Thursday, Sept. 21, when television programming was suddenly interrupted for about a minute with an ominous message predicting the end of the world.
Stacy Laflamme of Lake Forest said she was watching the HGTV channel via Cox Communications about 11:05 a.m. when suddenly an emergency alert flashed across her screen followed by a voice.
“Realize this, extremely violent times will come,” a man’s voice boomed, according to a video of the alert.
Laflamme said she was alarmed.
“It almost sounded like Hitler talking,” she said. “It sounded like a radio broadcast coming through the television.”
In addition to Cox, Spectrum cable customers in Orange County received the alert.
Erin Mireles of Diamond Bar was watching the Bravo channel on Spectrum’s cable system when her show was interrupted by the alert.
“I was definitely startled, ’cause the volume increased exponentially,” she said. “I wasn’t alarmed in the sense of thinking something was wrong, ’cause I assumed it was some sort of hack. My channel changed back to Bravo after a couple minutes.”