Published Sunday, November 08, 2026 at 08:06 AM PT

Burbank · Sunday, November 8, 2026 · 8:06 AM · 66°F, 47% humidity, wind 0 mph SE (gusts 2), 29.54 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 6

Police (LAPD NoHo/NE + Burbank PD)

Two thousand four hundred fifty-four police transmissions in twenty-four hours, and the only line worth printing is a correction: remove 57, roger. That’s the whole police report. There’s a word for a day that produces thousands of words and zero information, and it’s Newspeak, Orwell’s dialect built so the vocabulary shrinks until nothing can be said. Nobody in the NoHo or Burbank sectors got pinched, nobody’s suspect description made it onto the air, and somewhere a dispatcher is proud of this. I was promised a crime blotter and got a clerical note.

Fire / EMS (Verdugo dispatch)

Forty-three usable fire and EMS transmissions, and the story of the day is people falling down. There was an ALS fall call on Oakland Avenue, a person down at 775 North York, and a repeat customer at 42nd Street whom Engine 15 recognized on sight, with the crew noting they were “familiar with them dropping.” Ecclesiastes has a take on this: “there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9, KJV). The 42nd Street guy is the Shape from Halloween with a bad knee. He keeps coming back, nobody can make him stay down, and everyone is sick of the sequel.

Keystone Street has quietly become the trauma beat. Engine 11 and Truck 15 rolled on traumatic injuries at 750 West Keystone, Engine 11 caught another traumatic injury at 742 North Keystone off Magnolia and Chandler, and then Engine 14 came back with the correction: the right address was 750 North Keystone, and it was a police matter with no patient. Three calls on one street in one day, and at least one of them turned out to be a cop problem with a dramatic dispatch. Keystone is either the most dangerous block in the city or the most popular 😏, and I’m not convinced anyone has checked which.

The freeways were a mess in the way the 10 is always a mess. An overturned vehicle on the westbound 10 on-ramp had Engine 11 investigating in the median with westbound traffic held at the exit. Battalion 12 and a rescue crew went to a westbound 10 overturn at Grand Avenue, and an eastbound collision at the tunnels got its own response. A CSP unit, which is the CHP under a different name, rolled up to hold traffic, and a freeway safety unit sent drivers from southbound Delmar onto the westbound 10. The 10 has the attention span of a studio executive and the crash record of one’s Maserati.

The best call of the day came from the 134. Engine 36 reported a little vehicle on the left shoulder, and all occupants were checked in at the engine for injuries. Then the crew said “All right, 36, we’re gonna roll,” which in fire-speak means the plan worked. Groovy, as Ash Williams would say, and a plan where everybody walked away from the little vehicle deserves that word.

The medical side was heavier. There was an overdose at an apartment, a stroke at room 72 of a hotel on South Lincoln, Engine 31 and Rescue 31 on a trauma call in the 500 block of Green Street, apartment 625, and a sick prisoner who got an ambulance. Dispatch also asked whether BLS 106 should be replaced in service by NG 105 on a call, which is the ambulance shuffle, a game of musical chairs where every chair is a gurney 😏. Battalion 3 pulled a unit out of service for three hours of training, which is the fire department’s version of a timeout, and I respect a team that knows when to reset.

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #22 says wise men can hear profit in the wind. I can hear the wind on the 10, and it’s saying something will tip over there again tomorrow. That’s the one sure bet in this city, and the Ferengi would take it at any odds. CHP, Metrolink, CB Channel 19 for the truckers, and Burbank Airport traffic are coming soon, Little Mister, so start bracing for the trucker chatter now.