citywatch

Cumberland County recently received a federal Homeland Security grant that will enable it to provide a new service to all communities in the county, including Portland. The new service is called CITYWATCH, which will allow the Portland 911 dispatch center to rapidly call people in a small area of Portland, or call everyone in the entire city, with emergency information. Portland plans to use CITYWATCH to notify residents about emergency incidents, including missing children alerts, neighborhood crime alerts, emergency parking bans, and storm and hurricane warnings when we believe certain neighborhoods need to plan for evacuation. CITYWATCH can make thousands of phone calls per hour, which is a substantial improvement over our current emergency notification system.

CITYWATCH uses the Verizon database of listed and unlisted phone numbers. It DOES NOT include a cell phone data base. Portland recognizes that many permanent residents and most temporary residents (such as students at USM or employees at the Downtown, for example) rely on their cell phones for emergency notification.

If you would like to be included in the CITYWATCH emergency notification system database, please click here to add your name, address and cell phone number. Or, if you would feel more comfortable, please call the Portland Communications Office, Peter Dewitt, at 756-8173 , or contact him by email at  Communications Office to sign up to have your name and cell phone number included in the CITYWATCH emergency notification system.