Seattle Breaking — Wednesday, May 20, 2026
Daily recap · 308 dispatches
Seattle's fire, medical, traffic, and police agencies cleared 308 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, 5 traffic-related dispatches, and 43 fire-category calls, with 0 police clearances and 4 hazardous-materials dispatches rounding out the picture.
The busiest hour citywide was 19:00–20:00 local time, with 22 dispatches in that single hour. Among higher-severity incidents — structure fires, working fires, shootings, stabbings, robberies, and serious assaults — the feeds recorded 0 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 publishes only after each call is cleared and may continue to settle as more clearances post.
Notable incidents
No incidents on this day were flagged as high-severity by our scoring. A quiet day on the high-severity side does not mean a quiet day overall — most dispatch activity is low-severity aid and traffic calls. See the breakdowns below for the day's full picture.
By category
| Category | Dispatches |
|---|---|
| Fire | 43 |
| Medical | 211 |
| Traffic | 5 |
| Hazmat | 4 |
| Rescue | 7 |
| Other | 38 |
| Total | 308 |
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 | 6 |
| Fremont | 5 |
| Belltown | 15 |
| Elsewhere in Seattle | 282 |
Map of the day's dispatches
308 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 308 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 publish only after the responding officer files a clearance code, which typically lags the actual event by several hours, so on very recent days a police count may climb as more clearances post. "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 →
Get this in your inbox
Subscribe to the Seattle Breaking daily recap — a short morning email summarizing the previous day's notable dispatches, totals by category, and per-neighborhood breakdowns. Sent each morning around 7 AM Pacific. No tracking pixels, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.