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Spokane is the largest city in eastern Washington, built around the falls of the Spokane River about twenty miles west of the Idaho state line. Roughly 230,000 people live inside the city limits, and closer to 550,000 across Spokane County once you add Spokane Valley, Cheney, Deer Park, and the smaller communities spread out along the Palouse and up toward Mount Spokane. The city is the hub of a region locals call the Inland Northwest, which means its hospitals, its fire departments, and its I-90 corridor serve a population well beyond the county line. Gonzaga University sits just north of downtown, Fairchild Air Force Base sits just west of it, and Riverfront Park, left over from the 1974 world's fair, anchors the middle. Two events reliably fill those downtown blocks: the Lilac Bloomsday Run in early May and Hoopfest in late June, when thousands of basketball teams take over the street grid. Dispatch traffic follows the same shape as the city, quiet through an ordinary weeknight and layered with cross-talk once a big call or a big crowd pulls units in from several districts at once.
Spokane City and County Fire / EMS Dispatch
Spokane County, Washington
Begin by downloading Scanner Radio, a free app that streams live police, fire, and EMS radio straight to your phone. Once it's installed, tap the button above to open the Spokane City and County Fire / EMS Dispatch feed. Dispatch is where an incident is spoken aloud before anything else happens, so it's the natural first stop for anyone new to listening here.
To widen your listening from there, search "Spokane" in the app. You'll turn up a combined Spokane County Sheriff and Spokane City Police feed that carries the law enforcement side of the same calls, a Spokane Regional Mutual Aid channel used when agencies work a scene together, and the Department of Natural Resources northeast dispatch, which handles the timbered country outside the city. No hardware, antenna, or setup required. Just the app and a few seconds to tap into a channel.
A fire and EMS dispatch channel has a rhythm that's easy to learn. Most of what crosses it is medical: chest pains, falls, overdoses, lift assists at care facilities, and the steady stream of aid calls that make up the bulk of any modern fire department's workload. Between those you'll hear alarm activations, car wrecks on the freeway, brush fires on the dry hillsides east and south of town in late summer, and the occasional structure fire that pulls a second alarm and turns a single dispatch into ten minutes of coordinated traffic. If the codes and shorthand slow you down at first, our guide to scanner codes makes the chatter easier to follow, and how emergency dispatch actually works explains why calls are announced the way they are.
You can listen to Spokane fire, EMS, and police radio using the Scanner Radio app.
Yes. Listening to publicly broadcast scanner traffic is legal in Washington and across the United States. Restrictions only apply to using a scanner while committing a crime.
No. With the Scanner Radio app, you can listen to Spokane fire and EMS dispatch straight from your phone. There is no hardware, antenna, or setup required.
The Spokane City and County Fire / EMS Dispatch feed is the usual first stop. Dispatch traffic is where most incidents surface first, and this feed carries it for the city and the surrounding county.
It carries fire and EMS dispatch traffic for the city of Spokane and for Spokane County, Washington, including the districts surrounding the city.
Listening from somewhere else? Swipe through our other city guides.
