State guide

WA emergency data: sources and coverage

Western Australia is the one state where you cannot simply call the incidents feed. It sits behind SLIP, which means an account, a user group approval, and a token you have to renew every year.

Overview

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) publishes incidents through the SLIP (Shared Location Information Platform) ArcGIS FeatureServer, which requires a free SLIP account and an Esri token. Warnings are published separately as CAP-AU over a public RSS feed. Three further SLIP layers carry polygon geometry: incident boundaries, warning zones and total fire ban areas.

Available feeds

FeedFormatUpdateAuth
WA DFES Incidents (SLIP)ArcGIS REST5 minSLIP Esri token
WA DFES WarningsCAP-AU RSS5 minNone (public)
WA DFES Incident Areas (SLIP)ArcGIS REST5 minSLIP Esri token
WA DFES Warning Areas (SLIP)ArcGIS REST5 minSLIP Esri token
WA DFES Total Fire Ban Areas (SLIP)ArcGIS REST15 minSLIP Esri token

The three area layers are polygon geometry rather than incidents, so they are opt-in and stay out of default incident results and counts. Total fire bans are declared in summer only, so that layer is empty off-season.

Integration notes

Agencies
DFES (incidents), DFES-WARN (CAP-AU warnings), DFES-AREAS, DFES-WARN-AREAS and DFES-TFB (the three polygon layers).
SLIP access
The incidents feed needs a free account at data.wa.gov.au and membership of the DFES Restricted EmergencyWA User Group. Once approved you generate a one-year Esri token. The legacy api.emergency.wa.gov.au endpoints are not designated data feeds, confirmed by DFES in April 2026.
Timestamps
The critical one. Like SA, WA returns epoch milliseconds in local time (AWST, UTC+8). Perth has no daylight saving, so the offset is always exactly 8 hours. Subtract it before converting to UTC.
Warnings
The CAP-AU feed is the designated warning publication channel per DFES. It carries alert polygons and circles for affected areas.
Licence
CC BY 4.0. Commercial use approved by DFES in April 2026.