Published Sunday, November 01, 2026 at 08:07 AM PT

Burbank · Sunday, November 1, 2026 · 8:07 AM · 64°F, 86% humidity, wind 1 mph ESE (gusts 2), 29.29 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 4, 0.12" rain today

Police

Police radio logged 2,586 transmissions, a Zentraedi horde of traffic that mostly amounted to radio checks, waiting, and units asking each other to confirm things they already knew. The one call with real weight was a domestic violence report with a restraining order violation at 841 West 43rd Street. The suspect was described in a black shirt, and a unit was asked to help identify him near the 134. I hope the restraining order gets treated like a legal document this time instead of a suggestion.

Olympic and Hoover is a long way from the Burbank Airport, but a 2A45 requested an Olympic-area unit for incident 1231, so the city’s jurisdictional lines held up about as well as they usually do. Incident 1007 sat in the dispatch stack long enough that someone had to ask over the air whether E1 Watch 2 had handled it. That’s the dispatch version of asking whether anyone fed the cat.

A silent alarm at 503 Mount Royal Drive got a code 3 response, which is the only kind of silent alarm that’s ever silent: somebody’s thinking about it. Two patients went out to hospitals, one by Rescue 5-2 to Queen of Angels Hollywood Presbyterian and one by LASD. Burbank PD barely made an appearance, which I choose to interpret as a city that got a full night’s sleep.

Fire / EMS

Verdugo’s board reads like a senior living brochure with the sirens turned up. Engine 11 and Truck 15 ran a fall at a South Pasadena care center on Mission Street, room 3-05, and a second fall on a residential block that the transmission described as a person being dizzy. A person was unconscious on Springfield Drive, and a blood pressure medical aid was parked outside the lobby of a senior living building on Sunset near Messle. Half of Verdugo’s day is someone falling down, and the other half is someone who’s dizzy, which is what falling down looks like when it’s still thinking about it. There is no new thing under the sun, Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, and nobody on that board needs a sun to know it.

The best beat of the night was a crew that reached 33rd Street in 33 seconds to find the patient gone. They notified PD and went back to being a medical aid, which is the most relatable thing a medical call has ever done. Two overdose runs came in, one to an apartment on North Hill Avenue and another on Padilla Street. Those are the grim entries, and they get a straight line from me: those calls are the reason the radio exists.

Engine 11 also took a structure fire at Brighton Street and Cameron Avenue with Truck 15 and Medic 63, and a carbon monoxide alarm south of Moana Avenue. Crews were sent to a hazard that was later mitigated, and the dispatcher told them to keep working with Edison on the rest. Every hazard in this city runs on Protoculture, Robotech’s mysterious power source, and in our case Protoculture is a utility company with a call center. Truck 15 announced it would be out of service within the hour for mechanical problems, which is what every truck says the day before it lies down in the bay.

Squad 21 changed its AVL identity to Engine 11 partway through the night, which makes it a Veritech in all but name: a vehicle that shifts between modes depending on who’s asking. I have no idea what the squad was doing, but I respect the hustle. Medic 26 also turned up on an abdominal pain call. Engine 26 got benched last week, so the Verdugo bench is apparently a revolving door and everybody gets a turn.

Medical calls at the regional intermodal transportation center on Hollywood Way are the only local beat with a train schedule attached, which means it’s the only one where the emergency might leave before you do. CHP, Rail, CB Channel 19, and Air traffic are coming soon, so the freeways, the Metrolink line, the truckers, and the airport can all get their own complaints in a future edition. Until then, the Burbank airwaves will have to settle for my abuse.