Local fire and medical 9-1-1 calls will be routed to one dispatch center starting next week with the launch of Santa Barbara County’s new Regional Fire Communications Center.
Multiple dispatch centers currently field law enforcement, fire and medical emergency calls in the county. Once the RFCC opens, it will centralize dispatch for fire departments in the county and for emergency medical services.
County Fire Department officials say this will make operations more efficient and help them implement “borderless dispatch” where the closest available crews are sent to incidents, regardless of which agency they work for.
“The boundary drop will impact people who dial 9-1-1 the most. It’ll be the closest three engines, not just the closest engines in the city of Santa Barbara, for example,” County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig said. “It’s ironic that such a big change in how we do business, which is a benefit to the public, they may not see.”
“The net result is that taxpayers get a fire engine faster,” said county Battalion Chief Craig Vanderzwaag, who is managing the RFCC transition.
It’s a huge benefit to put all the people in one place, he said.
“All the intelligence and calls come here,” he added.
The RFCC will handle fire dispatch for the county, Santa Maria, Guadalupe, Lompoc, Santa Barbara, Montecito and Carpinteria-Summerland departments. American Medical Response ambulances also will be dispatched from the RFCC.
The RFCC was built adjoining the Emergency Operations Center at 4408 Cathedral Oaks Road, which is just down the hill from County Fire Headquarters.
The dispatch floor has workstations and a wall of screens where staff can watch television coverage or Alert California wildfire cameras. Command staff offices and an expanded dispatch room for incidents like the Lake Fire fill other rooms.
The construction project also expanded the Emergency Operations Center, which hosts Emergency Management staff and becomes a command center during major incidents.
Getting Ready to Open
There were major delays in construction and getting the new dispatch center’s technology ready to go, according to County Fire officials. They received the keys on Oct. 14, 2024, and the mid-May launch is about a year behind schedule.
Hartwig says Santa Barbara County is the first one to use entirely Next Generation 9-1-1 systems, due to CalOES mandates. It’s supposed to be more resilient and easy to expand or back up, Vanderzwaag said.
“It’s a challenge because essentially it hasn’t been proven; we’re going to prove it,” Hartwig said.
The county also switched vendors along the way — from NGA to Carbine — for the technology.
For the go-live week, teams from vendors and CalOES will be on hand to help, Hartwig said.
For the first phase, they plan to start with splitting County Fire from the joint Sheriff-Fire call center, then transfer over service for other agencies until they’re all served by the RFCC.
They’re not flipping the switch on all of them simultaneously, but expect to transition all the agencies within the week, Vanderzwaag said.
Hartwig compares the preparations to “go live” to a rocket launch — with regular meetings and testing everything, every day. Something could come up that makes them scrub, but the plan is to launch next week, he said.
Vanderzwaag called it a perfect analogy. For the past two weeks, everyone involved has been giving thumbs-up, green lights, down the line, he said.
Other behind-the-scenes changes have helped prepare for the RFCC, such as a countywide numbering system for engines and consolidating radio frequencies.
“It used to be that everyone had an Engine 4,” Hartwig said.
This week, and the months leading up to it, have focused on the training and testing — for the people and for the technology.
The RFCC will be staffed with five dispatchers during the day and four dispatchers at night.
They’ve been trained in emergency medical dispatch and are training in emergency fire dispatch. They learn specific questions to ask 9-1-1 callers to get a better idea of what resources to send, seeking to avoid sending a lot of fire engines to a backyard barbecue, Vanderzwaag said.
The Sheriff’s Office invited RFCC staff to train and operate at the Sheriff’s Dispatch Center for several months to get hands-on experience before the launch, spokesperson Raquel Zick said.
“The Sheriff’s Office is committed to facilitating the successful stand-up of the RFCC,” Zick said in a statement. “Our priority is, and always has been, public safety.”
What Changes When You Call or Text 9-1-1?
Zick, the Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, noted that 9-1-1 calls are still going to first be answered by a law enforcement agency — the Primary Public Safety Answering Points.
“If the call is determined to be a medical or fire emergency, it will be transferred to the RFCC for call interrogation including pre-arrival guidance, such as CPR instructions,” she said.
Universal emergency medical dispatch — including instructions to help callers before emergency medical personnel arrive — is another benefit of the RFCC, according to the county. Santa Maria and Lompoc dispatchers do not currently provide EMD, Zick noted.
With all county fire departments in the same dispatch system, the RFCC staff will be able to locate and send the closest resources to each incident. That’s the “borderless dispatch” Hartwig described.
Officials also want to remind residents that text to 9-1-1 is a countywide service.
“We cannot stress enough that people should call if they can, text if they cannot,” Zick said. “For example, someone with a disability which would make a phone call difficult, or someone in a dangerous situation where making a voice call would potentially put that person in danger.”