The New Year’s Day terrorist attack in New Orleans has prompted safety changes in Salem, with officials saying it would be “short-sighted” not to believe such a tragedy could unfold in the Witch City.

Salem is a tourism hot spot especially around Halloween when it hosts crowds as large as 100,000 people due to its “prominent place in American history and literature, its association with witchcraft and the witch trials of the 17th century, and so much more.”

“For these reasons, it would be short-sighted not to consider Salem a potential target for those who might seek to make a political statement through violence — for terrorism,” Mayor Dominick Pangallo and Police Chief Lucas J. Miller wrote.

Officials in the Massachusetts city, along the North Shore, said they met on Thursday to discuss how they could improve safety in October when crowds grow to a comparable volume to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and throughout the entire year.

The meeting came a day after a motorist rammed a pickup truck through a crowd of revelers, killing at least 15 people, in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter.

“The starkest lesson seems to be that while New Orleans enacted very similar measures to Salem to keep people on the street safe,” Pangallo and Miller wrote, “the assailant was able to simply drive around barriers, either because mechanical bollards were out of service or because he drove on the sidewalk.”

Salem officials had already begun developing plans to install additional bollards, both mechanical and fixed, to bolster the protection of pedestrian areas across the city, but the terrorist attack has prompted the project to accelerate, the mayor and police chief wrote.

The city, of roughly 44,700 residents, will also “seek to acquire additional mobile vehicle barriers and additional concrete ‘Jersey barriers.’”

“Planning for pedestrian-only areas will have to be more rigid and enforced more completely this October,” Pangallo and Miller wrote, “which will be an additional imposition on downtown residents and businesses.”

Concrete barriers are already in use during the busy seasons, creating “pedestrian-only areas.”

Seven years ago, New Orleans officials began installing adjustable barriers at intersections in the famed French Quarter to temporarily prevent vehicles from entering the tourist area where the narrow streets are typically teeming with pedestrians every night.

The steel columns, known as bollards, were in the process of being replaced and were not engaged early on New Year’s Day. Temporary asphalt patches were installed in the spots where the steel columns were removed, city documents show.

Officials in Salem said they would also consider increasing police staffing levels in October, a plan that could trigger “more additional officers from other communities and agencies” being used.

“This conversation is not over,” Pangallo and Miller wrote, “and we will continue to evaluate information from New Orleans to better learn from that terrible attack and improve on our own safety operations here in Salem. While we are thinking about Salem, today we also grieve with the City of New Orleans and with the families and loved ones of those killed.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report