Santa Barbara County officials and community members gathered Tuesday morning to hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Regional Fire Communications Center at the county’s Office of Emergency Management site on Cathedral Oaks Road.
The center, known as the RFCC, centralizes fire and medical emergency dispatch for all seven Fire Protection Districts in Santa Barbara County. Previously, emergency calls were fielded by several dispatch centers corresponding to different areas and agencies throughout the county. In contrast, the RFCC supports “borderless dispatch,” meaning dispatchers can send the closest available first responders to incidents regardless of incident location.
“For the first time — not just here, but really for one of the first times in the state of California — fire chiefs were willing to say, 'That little line on a map that shows where I’m responsible and I’m in charge, and where you’re in charge doesn’t really mean anything to us,'” said former County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig, who led much of the transition to the new center before his retirement on December 7.