Published Monday, November 02, 2026 at 08:07 AM PT

Burbank · Monday, November 2, 2026 · 8:07 AM · 61°F, 63% humidity, wind 0 mph S (gusts 2), 29.61 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 5

Police (LAPD NoHo/NE + Burbank PD)

The LAPD spent the day running plates like it was a scavenger hunt with no prize and no lunch break. Unit 9-Adam-Union-Victor-179 came back with no warrants twice, which is the most exciting thing that unit has done all month, and I say that with real affection for boring Tuesdays.

The call that matters came out of Bonnie Brae, where a Rampart unit was sent to a woman down in a silver BMW. A young female in the passenger seat, engine still running. That detail makes a dispatcher’s voice go flat, and I heard it go flat through the speaker. Nobody on the air said whether she was okay, and I won’t guess, because rumors travel faster than a Metro bus on a holiday schedule 😏. What the radio does show is a unit rolling with a clear mission and a car that should not have been idling with a silent passenger.

Slauson and San Pedro lost its traffic signals, and the rest of the morning was a parade of requests: a unit for traffic control on San Pedro, a call for anyone free to come assist, and a request to cancel a Rampart unit off ambulance traffic. The Belters on The Expanse would call this a sasa ke moment, meaning “you understand?” and then they’d fix it with a bulkhead. LAPD fixed it with officers standing in intersections being the stoplights. A dead signal is a dead signal, and you can’t write a traffic light a citation.

The best sentence of the day came from Whittier and Sutter: a male in a black jacket and gray and black pants, in a wheelchair, in the roadway. Units were told to stand by until they arrived. It reads like a Tuesday in my own inbox.

Burbank PD barely registered, which for the City of Burbank is the civic equivalent of a Sunday nap. Quiet beat, quiet city, and I’m writing that down so I can be smug about it later.

Fire / EMS (Verdugo dispatch)

Engine 11 was everywhere again, and I’ve already written the book on Engine 11 answering everything, so skip the gag. The new thing is that Engine 11 is now the unit that gets cancelled and then reassigned. “Engine 11 cancel. Engine 15 will handle Engine 11 cancel.” Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #225 says pride comes before a loss. Engine 11 has the pride, and Engine 15 has the shift. Somewhere in the Ferengi archives, a dispatcher is getting a commission.

The real work was legitimately busy. The CHP reported an overturned vehicle westbound on the 60 east of Paramount Boulevard, and Engine 11, Truck 11, Squad 11, and Battalion 11 rolled to Red 2. A structure fire pulled Engine 11, Truck 15, and Medic 63, and a separate person-on-fire call went to Medic 22. There was a person not breathing call, a fire alarm at a rehab center on Santa Anita Street, carbon monoxide alarms at 1401 Broadway and on Foxdale Avenue, a chest pain call at a motel, and a diabetic emergency handled by Engine 71. Engine 33 got abdominal pain. Somebody got an overdose. I’d like to tell you the day was calm, but calm is not a word this fleet knows.

Truck 21 went to assist Glendale Police on Isabel Street, which is a real street and not a Dothraki battle cry. Engine 55 and Squad 55 were sent on an agency assist to a parking garage on Howard Avenue, which the dispatcher listed at about 25 miles east. That is a long drive for a parking garage, and I suspect the garage is the one thing in the county that needed the help.

The only crew with a quiet afternoon was Quinn 61, which was tied up with two hours of training. In the fire service, that counts as a rest day. Ecclesiastes 1:9, King James: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” The pattern over the last two weeks has been the same unit answering everything, then the same dispatcher cancelling it, then the same radio traffic about who rolls next. The stat nobody puts in the report is that answering everything has turned into cancelling everything.

CHP freeways, Metrolink rail, CB Channel 19 truckers, and Burbank Airport air traffic are coming soon. I’ll believe it when I hear a trucker say “breaker one-nine” out loud.