Santa Barbara County’s Regional Fire Communications Center has handled thousands of 9-1-1 fire and medical calls since it started operating in May, and officials celebrated the collaborative achievement of the dispatch center on Tuesday. 

Just-retired Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig recalled talking with fellow chiefs about the need for a centralized dispatch center that would send the closest-available units to emergencies. 

“From that day, from that pizza party, if you will, we set forward … the easiest decision that we made in this process. The easiest thing to do was say yes, and after that it was very, very difficult,” Hartwig said. He called it a “working monument” that resulted from a huge collaborative effort. 

The RFCC was built next to the Emergency Operations Center at 4408 Cathedral Oaks Road. It handles fire and medical dispatch for the county, Santa Maria, Guadalupe, Lompoc, Santa Barbara, Montecito and Carpinteria-Summerland fire departments. It also dispatches American Medical Response ambulances. 

Fire Chief Garrett Huff, who is on his first week of the job, has been involved in the RFCC project for two years and talked about the construction delays and technological challenges getting it open for operations. Fire agencies started transferring their dispatch over in May, with all agencies in the RFCC by early July. 

Dispatchers are the “first first responders,” officials said.

“I can’t think of a more fundamental way to keep us all safe than a 9-1-1 system that’s coordinated and state-of-the-art,” Board of Supervisors chair Laura Capps said. 

Local dispatch centers found ways to handle 9-1-1 calls even during the countywide outage in July, caused by a construction crew accidentally cutting a fiber line in Santa Barbara. 

The $17.9 million project to build the RFCC also expanded the Office of Emergency Management, which hosts emergency management staff and others who manage the response to major incidents such as wildfires, floods, debris flows and oil spills. OEM staff also send out emergency alerts, evacuation warnings and orders, and other public information.

OEM Director Kelly Hubbard and public information officer Jackie Ruiz noted the larger rooms for the Joint Information Center and call center, where people staff phones to answer questions from the public. 

The RFCC and expansion project broke ground in 2023 and was expected to be finished in 2024, but was delayed to this year. Current and former county supervisors attended Tuesday’s ribbon-cutting event and tours, as well as representatives from multiple local fire agencies and cities.