Fire Communications Center Gets New Quarters, Equipment

The new North Net Fire Communications Center, which serves the cities of Anaheim, Fullerton, Garden Grove and Orange, was formally unveiled during a ceremony last week.

Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly, flanked by city council members and fire officials from the four cities, cut a ribbon at the new facility, located on the third floor of Anaheim City Hall West, on Thursday.

The dispatch center features state-of-the-art equipment that will shave seconds off emergency response times by receiving and transmitting calls at a faster rate, said Jean Ferrell, the center’s communications manager.

“Our old system was 10 years old,” Ferrell said. “This one is much larger and faster. It also has an automatic backup system.”

The system is also capable of storing a great deal more data, Ferrell said.

The dispatch center was formerly located in the basement of a fire training center in Orange, near Anaheim Stadium. The old building, where dispatchers made 52,000 calls in 1993, was in a flood plain.

“It scared me to death that we had the communications center for north Orange County operating in a building below grade in the Santa Ana River,” Anaheim Fire Chief Jeffrey Bowman said. “It is now in a very secure facility.”

A $1.6-million overhaul included buying the new equipment and moving the center to its new location, which is also the new administrative headquarters for the Anaheim Fire Department.

“I literally had people scattered all around the city,” Bowman said. “It’s more efficient to try and manage an agency where everyone is in the same place.”