On Thursday afternoon, following the Santa Clarita State of the City address, Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, and the city council unveiled a brand new, state-of-the-art Emergency Mobile Command Unit for local first responders.

Schiavo first secured funding for the project during her first year in office back in 2022. 

Jokingly, she remarked, “We’ve been waiting a long time. I secured the funding in our budget, my first year I was elected and now I’m in year three. Apparently, it takes a while to put one of these together.”

The custom-made command unit is tailored to meet the community’s needs and is especially valuable during fire season.

Schiavo, who worked in disaster response before her election, understands the importance of such a tool. Part of her previous role involved deploying nurses to disaster areas to provide medical care.

“I’ve seen how critical it is to have the information you need when you need it to be able to make decisions that can protect our community,” said Schiavo.

Inside the Command Unit, multiple monitors display feeds from cameras mounted on the exterior. The system can also track wind patterns and fire locations in real time.

The new unit allows fire and sheriff personnel to coordinate more efficiently in one central location, streamlining decisions about evacuations and other emergency operations.

“Having this kind of a unit out close to where the disaster is, the fire or the flood or whatever it may be, is really critical,” said Schiavo. “To have all of the incident command personnel in the same place at the same time to be able to collaborate is great.”

Schiavo added that having everyone together in a safe area reduces delays in communication and those saved minutes could mean saved homes, businesses, and lives.

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