Month: July 2025

Christer Schmidt

CENTRAL COAST, Calif. – Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner will be temporarily suspending service north of the Goleta station due to the La Cañada Honda Bridge Replacement Project. 

The closure will allow Amtrak to work on the 127-year-old steel viaduct over Honda Creek in Santa Barbara County.

All rail from the Goleta train station through the San Luis Obispo station will be closed.

An alternative bus route will be made available during the closure. Bus connections will be available for southbound trains 774 and 794 from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara, and for northbound trains 761 and 779 from Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo. The buses will follow Route 17 between Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, with stops in UC Santa Barbara, Solvang, Buellton, Santa Maria, and Grover Beach.

In addition to these bus connections, Route 17 will operate on its normal schedule and route. 

The closures will last from August 1st to August 16th.

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John Palminteri

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – The Santa Barbara City Fire Department put its newest and most sophisticated fire apparatus into service Friday. It is a truck with a ladder reach of 107 feet.

“This apparatus is capable of reaching the tallest building in the city, which is the Granada Theater,” said Santa Barbara City Fire Chief Chris Mailes.

The truck was ordered in 2022 in anticipation of future needs.

It has a cost of $1.67 million. If it were to be ordered today, the price would be $2.28 million.

The crew from the previous truck transitioned their equipment after a morning ceremony, which included pushing the truck into the station house (with engine assist). That is a tradition.

This vehicle will be able to handle fire calls for all mid-rise or high-rise buildings primarily in the city of Santa Barbara, but also on mutual aid to Montecito and Carpinteria which do not have a ladder truck. “Having an aerial ladder attached to an apparatus that can extend over even a smaller building. It is by far the safest for the crew to operate. So that ladder goes up quite often,” said Mailes.

There are four in the county with the next closest in Goleta. The other two are in Solvang and Santa Maria.

“This rig has to be really, really maneuverable up to the narrowest streets of Santa Barbara,” said Mailes. It also has to make its way into the State Street promenade or for example, behind the Granada Theatre.

Fire Captain Bob Kendall said many response functions will not change, but there is a learning curve with some of the new designs and technology. “They learn mostly the equipment and everything that’s on it when they go to their engineer task. They learn how to operate it and operate safely, effectively, quickly.”

The truck has battery powered equipment stored in the side compartments.

It has a “clean cab” that will be free of fumes that could lead to health problems.

The fire truck was build by Pierce Manufacturing in Wisconsin. A special team from the fire department went back in person to make the precise order for the needs of the Santa Barbara community.

From the order and manufacturing, the rig was delivered to a site in Ontario for final testing and then it came to Santa Barbara.

It will operate out of Station 1 on Carrillo Street.

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Jarrod Zinn

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. – Cal Poly held the swearing-in ceremony for its new police chief this morning.

The new chief brings plenty of experience, and the previous one was promoted.

Last year, previous Cal Poly police chief George Hughes was promoted to vice president of public safety for both this campus and the one in Solano, and today he officially swore in his successor for SLO’s campus police chief.

Robert Plastino brings nearly three decades of experience in public safety with the Santa Barbara county sheriff’s office in various capacities.

“I was the chief deputy of law enforcement operations there,” says Cal Poly’s new police chief Robert Plastino. “So handled patrol from Carpinteria up to Santa Maria out to Cuyama and then all of our detectives in our detective bureaus.”

He also worked for public safety at Isla Vista, giving him a range of experience and knowledge of the central coast.

“The university is like a city,” says Chief Plastino. “I mean, it’s its own city. It’s got almost everything you can think of, you know, in the way of what a city might have. So it’s very similar. And I kind of look at it from that perspective.”

After Plastino was sworn in by Hughes, Plastino then swore in a total of six new officers which included a canine unit named Dex.

“Our previous K-9 Zeus retired about a week ago and Dex is coming in, bring in a fresh new perspective from the K-9,” says Cal Poly Public Safety’s executive director Anthony Knight.

Public safety officials for Cal Poly say this event was somewhat rare since new chiefs don’t come along often, but the old chief isn’t really leaving, either.

“I’m excited to be here,” says Chief Plastino. “I have got a great department to work with. I have a great boss that has stood in my shoes before, which is unusual. That’s not something that normally happens. Chiefs come in and they don’t get to work directly for the previous chief. So that’s a positive. That means that it’s going to be a seamless operation.”

Cal Poly public safety leaders are encouraged by the smoothness of this last year, and they look forward to working with the student body as much as the community to enhance student experience and maintain safe operations.

Chief Plastino says the middle of summer is an ideal time for him to get settled, before normal classes resume in about a month’s time.

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