I spent some time late yesterday poking around the Spokane Valley Fire Department's new web site and came away pretty impressed. The old one was rather clunky and not very useful, but this one has tons of bells and whistles. My favorite is the listing of recent calls. The home page comes up with a brief mention of the most recent five calls. But if you click on the link right below that, you'll get all the calls for the last 96 hours. Each entry lists the date, time, type of call, which engines responded and an approximate address (it lists cross streets, not the exact house or business address). If you click on the address a map will pop up showing that location. And if you click on one of the engines that responded, it will give you a picture of that apparatus. It can come in handy if you want to check and see why there were a couple of fire trucks on your street.

There are also press releases, photos from fire scenes, meeting minutes, newsletters and a calendar of upcoming events. Mako the arson dog has his own page. You can even bring up a web cam that is pointed at the new administration building construction site so you can check on its progress. I encourage everyone to visit the site and start clicking on links.

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