September 2026

Preparing Our Community for Change

Change is rarely easy — especially when it involves services people have relied on for years. As the City of Spokane works to establish its own 911 communications center, SREC is focused on making the transition as clear and seamless as possible for the community.

The first major public-facing change comes in October, when the City of Spokane will begin handling its own non-emergency calls and reports through 311. Crime Check will continue serving the rest of Spokane County at the same number it has for years: 509-456-2233.

The important distinction will be where the incident occurred. If a non-emergency incident occurs within Spokane city limits, it will be handled by City of Spokane 311. If it occurs elsewhere in Spokane County, SREC Crime Check will continue to assist.

Preparing before the change

Rather than waiting until October, SREC is already working behind the scenes to prepare our technology — and our callers.

As part of that work, we are intermittently testing a new feature in our automated Crime Check system. Callers may hear:

“To get you the right help, please give me the location or address of the incident.”

For now, calls will continue to route to SREC as they do today. The testing allows us to make sure the system can accurately identify and validate locations before the transition begins, while also giving callers an opportunity to become familiar with the new question.

We are also working to educate the community about what is changing, what is staying the same and which service to contact. That outreach will continue and increase as each transition date approaches.

Helping the system help you

Our automated Crime Check system works much like an advanced phone tree, using what callers say to help get them to the appropriate resource — including a live person when needed.

Callers can help the process work more quickly by speaking clearly, answering the questions asked, avoiding interruptions while the system is speaking and giving it a moment to process each response. Trying to bypass the questions can actually make the process take longer.

And remember: we're asking where the incident occurred, not necessarily where you are when you make the call.

One transition, several milestones

The October Crime Check change is one step in the larger transition established through the December 2025 agreement between SREC, Spokane County and the City of Spokane as the City creates its own emergency communications center.

• October 2026: The City begins handling its own non-emergency calls and reports through 311.
• January 2027: The City begins dispatching its own fire calls.
• January 2028: The City becomes the primary 911 answering point for calls originating within Spokane city limits.

Until that final transition, SREC will continue answering 911 calls throughout Spokane County, including within the City of Spokane, and transferring City calls as appropriate.

There will be a lot of information for the community to absorb over the coming months. SREC's goal is to prepare early, communicate clearly and help people understand where to turn when they need assistance.

Through every phase of the transition, the priority shared by SREC and our public safety partners remains the same: getting people to the right help when they need it.

Every Call Starts With a Place

How GIS quietly helps keep our community and first responders safe.

When someone calls 911, one of the first and most important questions is simple: Where are you?

Getting the right resources to the right location is at the heart of SREC’s mission, and behind that seemingly simple task is an enormous amount of geographic data, technology and ongoing work.



SREC’s Geographic Information Services, or GIS, team maintains and develops the mapping data that helps Communications Officers understand where an emergency is occurring, which agency has jurisdiction and how responders can get there. Roads, addresses, driveways, jurisdictional boundaries, mile markers, trails and new development all matter when seconds count.

And Spokane County is constantly changing.

In 2025 alone, SREC GIS reviewed approximately 9,500 address, street, driveway and common-name edits and updated Fire and Law CAD with 2,900 new addresses and sub-addresses, 240 new streets and 390 new driveways. The team also provides mapping and analysis for public safety agencies throughout the region and is preparing mapping for SREC’s future CAD system using data standards designed for Next Generation 911.

That work is largely invisible to the public. But during a major emergency, its value can suddenly become very visible.

From a Dispatch Challenge to a Community Tool

Several years ago, SREC’s GIS and IT teams began working closely with Fire Dispatch to improve the cumbersome process dispatchers used to create and issue wildfire evacuation alerts. By sitting with Communications Officers and watching the process firsthand, the technical teams saw an opportunity to build something better.

Together, they developed an internal GIS application that simplified creation of evacuation zones and automated much of the information needed to launch an alert. A process that previously could take 10 to 15 minutes was reduced to roughly three to five minutes—giving Fire Dispatch valuable time back during rapidly evolving incidents. The same evacuation information could also be integrated into CAD so Communications Officers answering 911 could see what was happening and provide better information to callers.

The system faced an extraordinary test during the 2023 Gray and Oregon Road fires. As evacuation areas rapidly changed, the underlying GIS data also made it possible for SREC to develop a public-facing evacuation map where residents could enter an address and determine whether they were in or near an evacuation area.

That collaboration between GIS, IT and Dispatch has continued to evolve ever since.

Behind the Map During the Spokane Complex Fires

During this August’s Spokane Complex Fires, thousands of people used maps and apps to understand what was happening around them. Behind those screens, SREC GIS and IT employees were working long hours to make sure the geographic information feeding those tools remained accurate, available and accessible.

The work actually began before the first fire. Knowing conditions were high-risk, GIS and IT staff performed system checks, backups and carefully timed updates to six GIS servers so routine maintenance would not risk interrupting evacuation operations during an active incident.

Once fires began, the team monitored evacuation data and the performance of SREC’s public evacuation map as traffic surged following emergency alerts. That work continued late into the night and through the weekend.

It also extended beyond SREC’s own systems.

Watch Duty, the popular wildfire information app, uses SREC evacuation data to display official Spokane County evacuation areas to its users. When a technical issue affected how SREC’s evacuation zones were appearing in Watch Duty during the Complex Fires, SREC GIS worked directly with the Watch Duty team to find a solution. GIS staff tested changes and modified SREC’s data structure during a carefully selected lull in fire activity, allowing the evacuation polygons to again display in Watch Duty within hours rather than waiting for a longer-term software fix.

That is an important distinction: SREC maintains the official evacuation map and underlying evacuation data, while services such as Watch Duty can help extend the reach of that information to even more people.

GIS Is Public Safety

Wildfires provide a dramatic example, but GIS supports public safety every day.

It helps determine which fire district, law enforcement agency or response area serves an address. It helps Communications Officers locate callers and visualize incidents. It incorporates new roads and developments into CAD. It supports analysis of response areas and estimated travel times. It creates tools that help train new Communications Officers who must learn Spokane County’s complicated patchwork of municipal, fire and law enforcement boundaries.

Most people will never meet SREC’s GIS team or see the thousands of data updates, system checks and lines of code behind their work.

But they may see the result when they look up their home on an evacuation map. A dispatcher sees it when a caller gives an unfamiliar road name. A firefighter sees it when information helps guide resources toward an incident.

In emergency communications, knowing what is happening matters. Knowing exactly where it is happening can make all the difference.

And that is why GIS is not simply mapping. It is part of the infrastructure that keeps our community safe. We're grateful to work with such experienced and talented individuals everyday.