Results - Topic: Incident Reports

Aftermath: Lakewood LODD

December 8, 2009, 0600 hours. McChord Air Force Base, Tacoma, Washington. All flights in and out were suspended at this busy Washington State Air Force base to allow almost 3,000 law enforcement vehicles onto the flight line. Row upon row of patrol cars, marked and unmarked, fire rigs, ambulances and motorcycles waited silently in the icy darkness . At 1003 hours, the first vehicles in the procession began ten miles of mourning to honor four Lakewood Police officers slain in one awful...

Books

K9 Turn Over

This K9 unit from the Greenville County (SC) Sheriff's Department lies on its roof after flipping over after a collision with another car last November 11th. The deputy and his canine partner were responding to fill with another unit when he struck a car pulling out of a driveway. Both the deputy and the dog escaped the car without injury; the driver of the other car was treated at a local hospital and released. The crash is being investigated by the Sheriff's Dept. and the South Carolina...

Miracle on the Hudson - The Rescue of Flight 1594: The View from Dispatch

Yesterday marks the third anniversary of the emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River that saved the lives of all 155 people on board the aircraft. The firefighters and officers who worked the night tour of January 14th and the day tour of January 15, 2009 were in for a busy 24 hours. The men and women of the Manhattan Communication Office were in for a busy day tour. However, they didn't realize how busy!

Operation Serenade: Simi Valley PD and President Reagan's Funeral

As a dispatcher with the Simi Valley (CA) Police Department since 1977, promoted to the position of Communications Manager in 1990, I have been involved with many citywide incidents from earthquakes, to fires, to floods, to the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library with five living Presidents attending. But nothing has come close to being involved in managing public safety during the internment of Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States. This event was...

Reactive and Proactive

How Communication Helped Safeguard Southern California Residents during the Wildfires

The Day I Went from Dispatcher to a First Responder

If you work as a dispatcher long enough, you inevitably face one of our occupation's worst type of calls: the death of a child. Any death call can be traumatic, especially if it comes on the heels of something you have recently experienced yourself, such as the death of a parent.

The Poomacha Fire

The Poomacha Fire started in the early hours of October 23 as a residential structure fire that spread to the wildland. Around noon that day, I received a call from CAL FIRE Battalion Chief Alan Knapp from the Lake-Napa-Sonoma Unit; the Communications Unit Leader (COML) on California Incident Management Team 4, which had been pre-staged in Southern California awaiting assignment and were now heading to San Diego County to support command of the Poomacha fire.

The Shooting at Virginia Tech

On the morning of April 16, 2007, the quiet calm that hung over the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, southwestern Virginia, was pierced by the sharp pop of gunshots and the cries and screams of panic and pain.

Video Aids Wildfire Management in San Diego County

On Sunday, October 21, 2007 the first of many wildfires began burning out of control in the Portero area of San Diego County. Fueled by high off shore winds, multiple fires were tracked and managed over the course of 10 days.