Seattle Breaking — Thursday, August 20, 2026
Daily recap · 1306 dispatches
Seattle's fire, medical, traffic, and police agencies cleared 1306 dispatches across the city on Thursday, August 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 233 medical-aid responses, 198 traffic-related dispatches, and 52 fire-category calls, with 773 police calls and 0 hazardous-materials dispatches rounding out the picture.
The busiest hour citywide was 12:00–13:00 local time, with 96 dispatches in that single hour. Among higher-severity incidents — structure fires, working fires, shootings, stabbings, robberies, and serious assaults — the feeds recorded 1 event, 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 · 1XX BLOCK OF 27 AV · 23:46 (Seattle Police)
By category
| Category | Dispatches |
|---|---|
| Fire | 52 |
| Medical | 233 |
| Traffic | 198 |
| Police | 773 |
| Rescue | 7 |
| Other | 43 |
| Total | 1306 |
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 | 21 |
| Fremont | 24 |
| Belltown | 68 |
| Capitol Hill | 89 |
| Downtown | 76 |
| Pioneer Square | 19 |
| Chinatown–International District | 42 |
| First Hill | 34 |
| University District | 51 |
| Ballard | 47 |
| Queen Anne | 28 |
| Northgate | 13 |
| West Seattle Junction | 18 |
| Columbia City | 5 |
| Elsewhere in Seattle | 771 |
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 1306 dispatch records published by the Seattle Fire Department and the Seattle Police Department through the Seattle Open Data portal for Thursday, August 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.
← Aug 19, 2026 · All recaps · Aug 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.