Emergency alarms went off Tuesday across the University of Central Florida.
It was just a drill, but it was a chance for the university to learn what works and what doesn’t.
The first alert went off right after the lunch hour. Sirens blared and a thunderous voice announced the test over a campus-wide public alert system.
The audible alerts are for students and staff walking around campus... text messages, emails and radio alerts for everyone else.
"All of our students faculty and staff are automatically registered to receive UCF alerts so today we reached about 77,000 people," said Courtney Gilmartin with UCF.
The quarterly tests originate from the University's Emergency Operations Center and are designed to keep everyone prepared in the event of an actual threat to staff or student safety.
"I think these alerts are very very important," said student Danielle Case. "You want to make sure you are paying attention to what it is saying. "
Its also a chance for officials to find out flaws in the system. On Tuesday, an audible alert that was scheduled to go off failed.
Officials say they are working on why the speakers near the student union failed but say that is one reason they have redundancies in their alert system.