Visitor In a Trunked Land

Did a quick 36 hours up in lovely San Francisco this weekend. Stayed at a nice high-rise hotel right downtown and heard the music of sirens all day and all night long. Used to live up there a few years back and had some pretty decent scanning on the fire channels. The dispatchers were all salty and old school and pretty lousy on the air, but they caught good fires (just like the old East Coast city it wishes it was) and threw a shitload of resources at pretty much every alarm.

While I was there, the whole thing went trunked, which was annoying as shit. Of course, I've got the fancy digital Bearcat and Trunktracker etc., etc. But when you're a tourist, it's no fun to drag even the little Bearcat up there and set up all the Talk Groups. So I listened to the music and saw the badass Rescue 1 tearing ass down Mission Blvd. on Saturday afternoon. Couldn't find a pic of it online, so I had to settle for a Truck Company working something downtown.

I guess my misery index will increase down here in SoCal when BHPD and BHFD finally trunk it.

Flying Eggs!

Beverly Hills PD never ceases to have that small town feel. Officers are on the lookout for flying eggs, near the intersection of Brighton and Camden. "Eggs were seen flying through the air five ago," the dispatcher says. Laughter heard in the background.

Running At Half-Speed

That seems to be the case over at the LAFD blog where Brian Humphrey & Co. have resumed sporadic posting, with incidents generally a few weeks behind. Here's hoping that they catch up soon and are back at full-speed ahead.

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Also, my fish-out-of-water sighting today came as I strolled down South Beverly Drive in the B.H. and I saw Light Force 102 moseying south gawking at the hotties on the sidewalk and the Ferraris parked at the meters. Based in the Valley's non-descript South Van Nuys area, 102's rarely makes an over-the-hill appearance. No idea what they were doing down here unless they were moving up C-A-V (Conditionally Available) to cover a nearby Task Force house like 58's or 92's while those companies were out on a drill or something.


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Saw BHFD Engine 2 and one of the Freightliner Rescues working hard today on North Beverly Drive. Parked in the red zone, per usual, while the boys sipped on their $4 Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf drinks. That's a tradition almost as old as I am. What was unusual were the two muscle-T-shirt clad dudes in jungle fatigue pants and black shirts with a stealth BHPD patch on the sleeves. Bright gold badges and 9 mm sidearms on the hips. A little over-the-top per usual for the Beverly Hills public safety. Probably SWAT guys. Enjoying their coffee on the public dime.

Short and Bittersweet

That's the gist of the message the LAFD's Brian Humphrey posted on the LAFD blog earlier today. "Staffing issues" are cited as the reason for the blog's indefinite hiatus.

Humphrey alluded to staffing changes in a mass email he sent to LAFD email recipients earlier this week. Times could be a'changing down in the bowels of LAFD's OCD section. Maybe they're re-evaluating the role of the 24/7 Public Service Officer who takes up a chair (and bed and meal) down in Dispatch, hundreds of feet below City Hall East.

We'll see how this all pans out, but I hope it doesn't spell the death of the excellent blog Humphrey et. al. have put up for the last year or two.

While We're At The Fire

It's worth checking out this great photo from eecue.com of an old 1980's Seagrave working hard as Engine 210 at the Structure at 4th and Broadway this morning.

This is why they call the 200-series engines the "Pump!

photo: eecue.com

All Those EMS Calls...

...are worth it for the overworked downtown LAFD crews if their reward is catching a Major Emergency Structure like the one that hit this morning at 4th and Broadway. I was fast asleep when it went off this morning a little before 5 and by the time I got the scanner cranked up around 8 a.m., all I caught was a little traffic on Tac-12 about shutting down ladder pipes.

LAObserved has a good round-up of the blog action and photos here.

photo: Dave Bullock/eecue.com