Mutual aid is the byword among firefighters, so when former Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Eric Peterson brought up the idea of a single dispatch center for all departments countywide, the other six fire chiefs quickly agreed it would be the right way to respond to emergencies. The result, years and years in the making, said Santa Barbara City Fire Chief Chris Mailes, is the Regional Fire Communications Center, which broke official ground on Tuesday afternoon.
The new dispatch center would contain “state-of-the-art” technologies, allowing coordinated responses and enabling the agencies to “think beyond our borders,” said Mailes. The concept of dispatching the unit closest to an emergency made sense, the Board of Supervisors agreed, approving the concept in 2021. At the time, Sheriff Bill Brown — whose campus houses the current dispatch center for County Fire — argued the added time to switch to a different dispatcher would cause delays.
However, “When you call 9-1-1, the dispatcher asks if the call is for fire, police, or medical,” said the current county fire chief, Mark Hartwig, on Tuesday. Fire and medical calls would go immediately to the new regional dispatch center, once it’s completed, “and with one call, you can see where the need is, direct a crew to the position, and arrive at protocols,” he said. Five different dispatch centers currently send out calls for Summerland-Carpinteria and Montecito, City of Santa Barbara, Lompoc, Guadalupe and Santa Maria, and County Fire through the Sheriff’s Office. About 70 percent of the calls are for medical emergencies.