Seattle Breaking — Wednesday, May 20, 2026
Daily recap · 1330 dispatches
Seattle's fire, medical, traffic, and police agencies cleared 1330 dispatches across the city on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, according to the Seattle Open Data feeds published by the Seattle Fire Department and the Seattle Police Department. The day's activity was led by 211 medical-aid responses, 191 traffic-related dispatches, and 43 fire-category calls, with 836 police calls and 4 hazardous-materials dispatches rounding out the picture.
The busiest hour citywide was 09:00–10:00 local time, with 82 dispatches in that single hour. Among higher-severity incidents — structure fires, working fires, shootings, stabbings, robberies, and serious assaults — the feeds recorded 2 events, listed below. As elsewhere on this site, these counts reflect what agencies published rather than what was reported to 911, and the police data in particular is refreshed about once a day, so recent days may still be filling in.
Notable incidents
- DRIVE BY SHOOTING - NO INJURIES · 9XX BLOCK OF N 101 ST · 11:17 (Seattle Police)
- DRIVE BY SHOOTING - NO INJURIES · 9XX BLOCK OF N 101 ST · 03:13 (Seattle Police)
By category
| Category | Dispatches |
|---|---|
| Fire | 43 |
| Medical | 211 |
| Traffic | 191 |
| Police | 836 |
| Hazmat | 4 |
| Rescue | 7 |
| Other | 38 |
| Total | 1330 |
By hour of day
All hours are in Pacific time. Bars are scaled to the day's busiest hour.
By neighborhood
Dispatches inside the bounding boxes used by our neighborhood feeds, plus a count for everywhere else in the city. Smaller neighborhoods produce smaller counts; this is a function of population and land use, not a measure of safety. For the longer reasoning, see neighborhood dispatch patterns.
| Area | Dispatches |
|---|---|
| South Lake Union | 18 |
| Fremont | 24 |
| Belltown | 68 |
| Capitol Hill | 106 |
| Downtown | 69 |
| Pioneer Square | 17 |
| Chinatown–International District | 36 |
| First Hill | 42 |
| University District | 51 |
| Ballard | 42 |
| Queen Anne | 24 |
| Northgate | 27 |
| West Seattle Junction | 15 |
| Columbia City | 10 |
| Elsewhere in Seattle | 781 |
Map of the day's dispatches
400 of the day's dispatches had usable coordinates. Pin colors match the category legend used elsewhere on the site.
About this recap
This page summarizes 1330 dispatch records published by the Seattle Fire Department and the Seattle Police Department through the Seattle Open Data portal for Wednesday, May 20, 2026. Fire records publish within minutes of dispatch; police records are refreshed by the city about once a day, so on very recent days the police count may be incomplete until the next refresh. "Notable" is a simple severity flag based on call-type strings (structure fires, working fires, shootings, stabbings, robberies, assaults, hazmat). Counts are exact for what the feeds published; the category mapping into fire / medical / traffic / police / hazmat is our own and documented on the How It Works page.
← May 19, 2026 · All recaps · May 21, 2026 →
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