GLENDALE : Fire-Safety Access Road Almost Done

A $1.38-million fire-safety access road behind Glendale Community College has been completed with the exception of minor touch-up items, college officials said.

The 2,100-foot-long road, which stretches from Verdugo Road to Mountain Street, will make it easier for firefighters to respond if a blaze were to break out on campus or in the hills behind it, said William F. Taylor, Glendale’s director of business services.

Before, “we had no way to protect an eastwardly approaching fire because there was no access behind our buildings,” Taylor said after the college’s board of trustees formally accepted the project as largely complete Monday night.

The college previously had only two fire hydrants on campus, he said. But five new hydrants have been placed along the perimeter of the paved road, which is open to the public and leads to a 750-space student parking structure being built behind the campus.