Car accident prompts emergency calls

Oct 22, 2019

Many Wareham residents were alarmed early Tuesday morning by emergency phone calls from the Police Department, made between 4:25 and 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday. 

The messages, part of the ALERTWareham system that sends messages by text, email and phone to residents who sign up to stay informed, were prompted by a 1 a.m. single-car crash that took down a power pole and wires in the area of 451 Main St.

Police said the driver was unhurt, but the downed pole and live wires on the ground made a stretch of Main Street impassable for several hours.

To alert residents about the blocked area, the Police Department sent out messages by text and email – but also mistakenly sent out phone messages, using a part of the service that is reserved for emergency calls only.

Awakened by middle-of-the-night ringing phones (generally a cause for alarm), residents took the robo-calls, staggered back to bed, and awoke the next morning to vent their frustration on various Facebook pages.

Later that day the Acting Chief John Walcek sent a press release in which he apologized to residents for the nighttime phone calls.

“In an effort to keep the public informed about on-going incidents in town, a misstep was made, and we apologize for any alarm or inconvenience to the public it may have caused,” the chief said. “The Police Department is taking steps to ensure this situation will not happen again.”