Housing and Development Newsletter
Widling left Montecito in 1991 to spend the next 23 years rising through the ranks in the Santa Maria City Fire Department to become the operations battalion chief in 2011. In 2015, he returned to the Montecito Fire Department as a shift battalion chief; and in July 2019 he was promoted to the division chief – operations position.
Widling has been an instructor for Allan Hancock College Fire Academy since the late 1990s and achieved the level of confined space rescue technician - senior instructor with State Fire Training in 2008.
Widling participated in the Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) program and currently serves as the chairperson for Santa Barbara County US&R Regional Task Force (RTF-12) and as deputy chairperson for the California Statewide US&R RTF Working Group, which is made up of all 12 of the state’s RTFs.
Welcome to Noozhawk Asks, a new feature in which you ask the questions, you help decide what Noozhawk investigates, and you work with us to find the answers.
Here’s how it works: You share your questions with us in the nearby box. In some cases, we may work with you to find the answers. In others, we may ask you to vote on your top choices to help us narrow the scope. And we’ll be regularly asking you for your feedback on a specific issue or topic.
We also expect to work together with the reader who asked the winning questions to find the answer together. Noozhawk’s objective is to come at questions from a place of curiosity and openness, and we believe a transparent collaboration is the key to achieve it.