How it works

From the radio to your screen in under a minute.

Lakes Area Wire is an independent, free news service for the Lakes Area of Oakland County. It isn't affiliated with any fire department, police agency or dispatch center.

  1. 01

    Listen

    Our own receivers record the fire and EMS channels of the Lakes Area and its neighbors on Oakland County's public radio system, around the clock, plus the countywide mutual-aid channels when the scene is in our area. Like a scanner, we publish what goes over the air as it was said, addresses included, except that a medical call is shown at its hundred-block (“the 4000 block of Delta Lane”), never the house or apartment number. Police channels are encrypted, so they aren't part of it.

  2. 02

    Transcribe

    A speech-recognition model running on our own hardware turns each call into text. A call appears, audio and words together, once that's done, usually about 20 seconds after it ends, so dead air and noise never reach you. Radio is noisy, so expect the occasional misheard word, street or number.

  3. 03

    Assemble

    An AI model groups calls about the same scene into one incident, dispatch and fireground channels together, and places it on the map at the address the radio gave (a medical call at its block); a pin that would land outside its town goes to the town's center instead. Drills are marked as training, and calls the radio says were cancelled, false alarms or found nothing are labeled that way. Dead air and calls with no words in them are left out. The original audio is kept as broadcast for 90 days.

  4. 04

    Summarize

    Once the radio goes quiet, an AI model writes a short summary from the traffic, and rewrites it if more traffic arrives. The whole site runs automatically; no person checks summaries before they're published.

  5. 05

    Alert

    Breaking alerts appear automatically, only when two separate radio calls confirm a major incident on scene, such as a working fire or an entrapment. Never for a drill, a cancelled call or a medical call. Email alerts are coming soon.

What to keep in mind

Scanner traffic is the earliest version of a story. First reports of injuries, causes and locations often change. Treat what you read here as preliminary.

Audio is kept for 90 days. Summaries and transcripts stay in the archive.

Spot something wrong, or know what really happened? Tap Report an error on the incident, or email [email protected].

In an emergency, call 911.