Dispatch Services / Command & Control

The Grass Valley Emergency Command Center (GVECC) provides all risk, command and control dispatch services to fire and emergency medical service (EMS) agencies in Placer County along with El Dorado, Nevada, Plumas and Yuba counties. The GVECC processes over 44,000 emergency calls annually over four frequencies and provides command and control over resources. The GVECC provides dispatch services to over 30 agencies including Sierra Nevada Ambulance, as well as air ambulance helicopters for the Sierra Sacramento Valley EMS agency, which also covers Colusa, Nevada, Placer, Sutter, and Yuba counties. The command center also serves as the Region Coordination Center for Region 4 of the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) and the Operational Area Coordination Center for Cal OES in Nevada County and the Lake Tahoe Basin.

The ECC was established in 1989 in cooperation with the United States Forest Service and Tahoe National Forest. It is staffed by one battalion chief, six fire captains, one staff services analyst and 17 communication operators. The fire captains assigned to the GVECC have extensive knowledge of field operations and are capable of acting as the incident commander during the initial phase of an incident and making adjustments to a dispatch based on the information gathered during 911 calls. Due to the level of discretion afforded to the captains and communication operators to make pre-arrival command decisions, the GVECC functions as a command center versus a dispatch center.