About Seattle Breaking
Independent · Civic-data journalism · Updated continuously
Seattle Breaking is an independent news aggregator focused on real-time public safety activity inside the City of Seattle. The site exists to make publicly available 911 dispatch data — already published by the City through its open-data portal — easier for residents, journalists, students, and visitors to read at a glance.
We do not break news in the traditional sense. We surface what is already a matter of public record, the moment it appears on the public record, and we organize it so a person looking at a map can quickly understand where fire crews and patrol units are responding right now and what they are responding to.
Why this site exists
Seattle is a city of roughly 750,000 residents spread across 84 square miles, with thousands of dispatch events generated by the Seattle Fire Department and the Seattle Police Department every week. That information is technically public — anyone can pull it from the Seattle Open Data portal — but the raw feeds are formatted for analysts, not for residents trying to figure out why a ladder truck is parked at the end of their block.
Our goal is small and concrete: take those feeds, categorize them into a handful of intuitive buckets (fire, medical, traffic, police, hazmat), drop them on a map, and refresh the view every thirty seconds. That is the whole product.
What we cover
Seattle Breaking covers dispatch traffic generated by two primary sources:
- Seattle Fire Department Real-Time 911 — every call accepted into the Fire Department's CAD (computer-aided dispatch) system, including structure fires, alarms, medical aid calls, motor-vehicle accidents, hazardous-materials incidents, and water rescues. This feed updates within minutes of dispatch.
- Seattle Police Department Call Data — calls handled by the Seattle Police Department, classified by clearance description. SPD data carries a small lag relative to the fire feed because it is published after initial event triage.
We also display optional scanner audio embeds (via OpenMHz) for users who want to listen to the same traffic the data is derived from.
What we do not do
Seattle Breaking is not investigative journalism, and it is not a substitute for a newsroom. We do not interview witnesses, file public records requests, or write narrative articles about specific incidents. We also do not publish names of victims, suspects, callers, or first responders. The data we surface comes already redacted of personally identifying information by the City; we do not attempt to re-identify it.
We are also not a tip line, a complaint channel, or an alternative to 911. If you are reporting an emergency, dial 911. If you are reporting a non-emergency, call the Seattle Police non-emergency line at 206-625-5011 or the Seattle Fire non-emergency line at 206-386-1400.
Editorial standards
We try to hold ourselves to a short, defensible set of standards:
- Source transparency. Every incident on the site is sourced from a named, public, government dataset. Links to those datasets are provided on the How It Works page. We do not display incidents we cannot trace back to a public record.
- No identification of individuals. We strip or omit fields that could identify a caller, victim, suspect, or responder. Addresses are shown at the block level when the upstream data already aggregates that way.
- No sensationalism. We do not editorialize incident types, we do not add commentary, and we do not rank incidents by perceived shock value. The categorization logic is documented and the source code is auditable.
- Corrections. If an incident later turns out to be a false alarm, a misclassification, or otherwise inaccurate at the source, it remains on the site only as long as the upstream feed continues to surface it. If you believe something is wrong, write us at corrections@seattlebreaking.com and we will investigate.
- Independence. Seattle Breaking is not affiliated with the City of Seattle, the Seattle Fire Department, the Seattle Police Department, King County, or any other government agency. No agency has reviewed, approved, or endorsed this site.
How the site is funded
Seattle Breaking is supported by third-party display advertising (Google AdSense) and, when relevant, by direct sponsorships from local businesses. Advertising is clearly labeled. Sponsorships, if any, are disclosed in the relevant article or page. No editorial content — including the categorization logic that decides whether an event is "fire" or "police" or "traffic" — is influenced by advertisers or sponsors.
Who runs it
Seattle Breaking is operated by an independent publisher based in the Pacific Northwest. The site has no formal newsroom, no full-time staff, and no investors. It is maintained as a civic-data project. For business or editorial inquiries, see the contact page.