November 7, 2011 Monday, THE BOSTON HERALD

Cops are preparing for a blitz of panicked 911 calls during a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, blanketing every TV and radio station coast-to-coast, that experts fear could produce a Orson Welles-like fear frenzy.

Boston and state police said they’re both staffing extra 911 dispatchers to answer calls at 2 p.m. Wednesday, when the 30-second alert from the Federal Communications Commission will interrupt regularly scheduled programming on all TV and radio stations in the United States and Puerto Rico.

The alert will look and sound like past local announcements, but Federal Communications Commission officials said prep for the nationwide effort has already exposed problems in the 50-year-old system, including the incapability to support closed captioning and translations.

Many cable viewers may also be left without a visual message saying, ‘This is only a test.’ Hence the possibility of a panic and a flood of calls from frightened day-time TV viewers, experts said.

‘Once you see the emergency broadcast system, that kind of loud sound, people are going to be doing head-for-their-bomb-shelter type things,’ said Boston University social sciences professor Thomas Whalen. ‘I think you’re playing with fire a little bit by not advertising more.’

John Pike of Global- – Security.org pointed to the infamous 1938 radio broadcast of ‘The War of the Worlds’ – and the panic it stirred in listeners – as an example of the reaction a blindsided public can produce.

‘Orson Welles scared the pants off a people with it,’ Pike said.

State police are prepared for an onslaught to its main communications center in Framingham, which when faced with full phone lines, routes incoming calls to one of its other centers automatically, said spokesman David Procopio. State police handle every 911 phone call from cell phones in the state. ‘We’re no strangers to a sudden surge of calls,’ Procopio said, pointing to the Halloween weekend snowstorm that had state police phones ringing, on average, every nine seconds for a full day.

BU communications professor Tobe Berkovitz also said he doubts the call volume will be an issue. In this age of Facebook, Twitter and the Internet, people are more likely to turn to resources other than police first, he said.

‘And then everybody will go back to the Kardashians,’ he said.

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