Seattle Breaking — Thursday, May 21, 2026
Daily recap · 1411 dispatches
Seattle's fire, medical, traffic, and police agencies cleared 1411 dispatches across the city on Thursday, May 21, 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 239 medical-aid responses, 217 traffic-related dispatches, and 59 fire-category calls, with 848 police calls and 2 hazardous-materials dispatches rounding out the picture.
The busiest hour citywide was 15:00–16:00 local time, with 93 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 is refreshed about once a day, so recent days may still be filling in.
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 | 59 |
| Medical | 239 |
| Traffic | 217 |
| Police | 848 |
| Hazmat | 2 |
| Rescue | 6 |
| Other | 40 |
| Total | 1411 |
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 | 36 |
| Fremont | 17 |
| Belltown | 68 |
| Capitol Hill | 75 |
| Downtown | 74 |
| Pioneer Square | 34 |
| Chinatown–International District | 30 |
| First Hill | 54 |
| University District | 50 |
| Ballard | 42 |
| Queen Anne | 36 |
| Northgate | 26 |
| West Seattle Junction | 17 |
| Columbia City | 13 |
| Elsewhere in Seattle | 839 |
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 1411 dispatch records published by the Seattle Fire Department and the Seattle Police Department through the Seattle Open Data portal for Thursday, May 21, 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.
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