Verdugo Fire celebrates 40 years of coordinating emergency services
When the Verdugo Fire Communications Center was established on Aug. 1, 1979, it was meant to help consolidate and streamline the dispatching of emergency services in Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena.
Forty years later, Verdugo Fire has grown to include 13 cities including Pasadena, Vernon and Monrovia as well as providing dispatching services for the Hollywood Burbank Airport Fire Department.
Headquartered on the third floor of the Glendale Fire Department, the center responded to 19,000 emergencies in its first year of service. Last year, it responded to more than 90,000 incidents and fielded more than 250,000 phone calls, according to Glendale Fire Chief Silvio Lanzas.
In celebration of the 40-year anniversary, members from the various fire agencies served by the center and Glendale officials including Mayor Ara Najarian and City Manager Yasmin Beers were on hand to mark the occasion.
Najarian presented the center with a mayor’s commendation, saying he is constantly in awe of the work done by the dispatchers.
“It’s incredible that all the cities in this region put their trust and faith into what goes on right here,” he said. “Dispatching life-saving equipment and personnel to solve all those problems out there … It’s something we’re proud as a city to have in Glendale.”
Lanzas called Verdugo Fire a model regional dispatch center and said representatives from agencies across California and even in Los Angeles County have visited the center in the hopes of regionalizing their own emergency communications in the same way.
