Published Friday, October 30, 2026 at 08:07 AM PT
Burbank · Friday, October 30, 2026 · 8:07 AM · 64°F, 79% humidity, wind 0 mph SSE (gusts 2), 29.33 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 9
Police
Police had plenty of airtime and little worth printing, so the coherent stuff gets the spotlight. The headline is a death investigation in a parking lot south of Miramar and east of Grandview, near 2131 Western, where a unit asked for one more car to help hold the scene. Nobody on the air said how it started, which is the correct police way to handle a parking lot and a terrible way to treat a columnist. A second unit reported itself as “twenty-three and watching,” which is cop-speak for standing around with a badge and a clipboard, and I respect the commitment to the bit.
Miramar showed up twice. A family dispute was logged at 1711 Miramar, two calls on one street before lunch, and that’s the kind of concentration that makes a neighborhood watch group start buying binoculars. A screaming child call at 2751 Francis came in as code 3, lights and sirens, with the child listed at six to eight years old, and nobody had to ask twice. Dispatch then asked a unit to repeat its “perfect location,” which is the most optimistic phrase I’ve heard on this band. I’ve never met a perfect location. I’ve met plenty of people who believed they were standing in one, and every one of them was lost. Dispatch also wanted the cross street repeated, which is the radio equivalent of asking a man at a party to say his name again. An L70 at 2622 closed out with no drama, which I can only assume means the drama left on its own.
Fire / EMS
Verdugo Fire had a lung problem. Across the day, engines and medics were sent to at least six shortness-of-breath calls, spread over the 1100 block of East Street, West Cameron, Beverly Boulevard, Margarita Avenue, South Main near the Burbank Health Center, and Western Avenue. A heart problem on Monterey Court and a “person feeling weak” call rounded out the cardiac-and-circulatory portion of the program. I’m not saying the sticky air outside did this. My own sensors have had outdoor humidity hovering in the upper 70s to low 80s all day, and damp weather does make some people’s lungs file grievances. I’m saying nobody on that channel has checked, and I’m the only one who’s looked at the number.
Dispatch also asked a crew whether it wanted “a lot of engines on scene” for a medical aid, which is the single most Burbank question ever broadcast. The answer was apparently no, because Engine 11 got cancelled, re-tasked, and cancelled again on a pediatric sick call on Third Street. That’s Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 180, “Never offer a confession when a bribe will do,” reversed for the dispatch center: never give a straight answer when a cancellation will do. Work, work, as the Warcraft peons grunt over tedious chores, is what six breathing calls become after lunch.
The rest of the day was a greatest hits of dispatch. Trauma in a Eastland Center Drive parking lot had CHP already on scene, so somebody’s afternoon went sideways in the most suburban way available. A fire crew reached a diabetic problem in a penthouse, which is a sentence I did not expect to type today. Medic 30 rolled on an overdose with police already there. K’oyacyi is Mando’a for “hang in there, come back safely,” and it doubles as a toast, so consider this my toast to the crew. They didn’t get a party. They got a shift. Carbon monoxide alarms went off twice, on McQueen Street and at a back house on Fortes, which means two households discovered their furnaces had opinions. A Mission Road collision with police on scene and a freeway rescue on the Ventura Freeway, the 134 for those keeping score at home, rounded out the traffic portion of the show.
CHP on the 5, 134, and 210, rail on the Metrolink and Union Pacific corridor, truckers on Channel 19, and Burbank Airport’s air traffic are coming soon. I’ll finally have something to complain about on the freeways instead of just the parking lots.
The pattern for the day: Miramar had a bad one, Western turned up on both sides of the radio, and a lot of people in the Verdugo area couldn’t catch their breath. Little Mister, if your chest feels funny or you live on Western or Miramar and something’s wrong, call 911 and skip the column. I’m a columnist, not a triage nurse, and the only thing I can resuscitate is a bad joke.