Big-city fire departments know they have to be prepared to deal with the national news media. But even small, remotely located communities have the potential for national media attention.

Fires are news. When any news story breaks, reporters go looking for sources. More often than not, stories of human tragedy include quotes from firefighters, police and hospital spokespeople. These professionals are part of the story, but there is another reason for their ubiquitous role. Often, they are the only sources available.

Frequently company spokespersons and building owners are unavailable for live television news coverage and first-day newspaper coverage. And even when they can talk to the news media, they may decline.

When the Chicago Fire Department fought the December 2004 high-rise fire at LaSalle Bank, First Vice President-Director of Corporate Communication Shawn Platt was an exception to the rule. He held a press conference in the street with his corporate headquarters burning in back of him. Yet every time he was asked about the cause of the fire or it's nature, he referred reporters to the Chicago Fire Department.

The one fire question Platt tried to answer got him into trouble. Had the decades-old building been retrofitted with sprinklers? Platt remembered seeing the sprinklers on the ceiling, so he said yes. But the fire department had better information. They told reporters sprinklers at LaSalle Bank were being installed but were not yet operational.

Many fire departments have an information officer who is prepared to deal with the routine fire story. The need for more sophisticated preparedness comes when a story expands beyond coverage of the fire itself. The Chicago Fire Department was well prepared to deal with the news media in part because a year earlier in 2003 a high-rise fire in the Cook County Office building killed six people who were trapped in a stairwell. An independent commission blamed the deaths on a lack of coordination within the department in addition to a lack of sprinklers, and recommended an overhaul of fire department procedures. As a result of a year of close public scrutiny, the Chicago Fire Department had an entire team of firefighters devoted to media relations, and they were more than prepared to deal with questions regarding the LaSalle Bank fire.

Typically the story outlives the fire if there is controversy either in the cause of the fire or in the way the fire was managed. In the first category, the fire department serves as a kind of expert witness in a public debate. This is the role played briefly by the Chicago Fire Department in the LaSalle Bank fire. In the second category, the fire department is the subject of the story, as in the case of the earlier Cook County office building, and more recently with the Sofa Super Store fire in Charleston, S.C.

As everyone knows, nine firefighters were lost June 18, 2007, when the roof of the Sofa Super Store collapsed. The human tragedy brought the story to national attention. This was the greatest loss of firefighters from a single incident since Sept. 11.

Some of the early follow-up stories on the fire were sympathetic. Susan Nicol Kyle writing for Firehouse.com News led her story off with “Chief Rusty Thomas didn't just lose nine firefighters. He lost nine friends.” Stories like this one focused on the lives of the nine men, their families and their friends.

Other reporters took a more newsworthy tact. They discovered controversy in the firefighting community over the way the fire was managed. The fact that dozens of federal investigators, including over 40 from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives, came to Charleston to investigate the fire required follow-up stories from local and national news media.

The story could have ended with routine reports by investigating groups discussing the cause of the fire and explaining how it spread so quickly. However, another element made this story even more newsworthy and kept it going. As coverage of the fire was broadcast around the country and made accessible through electronic sources like YouTube, other firefighters and firefighting organizations began to question how the fire was managed. They questioned why the men were on the roof of the building and why they appeared to be using red booster lines to fight the blaze.

A few years ago, the story questioning the procedures and policies of a fire department might not have developed. But today, local television news can get to more fires more quickly, and when they arrive, they usually find they were preceded by amateurs with video cameras. Consequently, everything the fire department does is in the public eye and subject to interpretation and critique. The Post and Courier of Charleston posted a video recorded by local “videographer” Howard Armstrong on its Web site.

As a rule, professional reporters are no more happy to see citizen journalists than are police or firefighters. Newspapers and news broadcasters profit from making news available to the public, however, and if someone has video footage of a newsworthy event, eventually it will find its way to a mass audience. The Abraham Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination and the George Holliday video of the Rodney King beating are two prominent examples.

Predictably, the final leg of this year-long news narrative focuses on Thomas. In September, ABC News 4 reported mounting pressure for the chief to resign. They also noted that Mayor Joe Riley was defending him and that perhaps he should resign as well.

To his credit, Thomas hired a special commission of fire experts to examine the department from top to bottom. The commission already has rolled out more than 200 recommendations and began to report on its progress modernizing and better training the firefighters, and they have kept the news media informed of their progress. The story may or may not come to a close when a report on what went wrong at the fatal fire last June eventually is released.

Certainly the most important thing to come out of this story will be the lessons learned on how to approach fires and protect firefighters. Yet, on another level, there is a significant lesson about how news travels and evolves, about what enlarges news, and what deflates it. It is a lesson about something for which every fire chief should be prepared.

The paths of public debate and the routines of the news business are highly predictable. What happened with the Charleston story is a small scale version of what happened with New York after Sept. 11. The tragedy at the World Trade Center was the focal point of the news. Then stories emerged about firefighters and their friends and families. Next came speculation on how they were deployed and whether or not they were appropriately equipped and trained. Finally came accusations and the debate about leadership that arguably affected former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's campaign for the presidency.

Knowing the paths news stories can take, even seeing them in terms of a highly predictable tree of options and contingencies, does not mean that certain outcomes can be avoided or manipulated. It does, however, provide a basis for professional leadership. All fires that make national news probably will lead to some level of public debate that potentially will question choices that were made and not made by those in charge. In the long run, it is not about avoiding public scrutiny, it is about being prepared for it.

Throughout his 30-year career, Thomas Roach has worked with media issues in the political, business and academic arenas. He has an associate's degree from Joliet Junior College, a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in English, both from Northern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in communication studies from Northwestern University. His dissertation on the American news media received the national Dissertation of the Year Award from the Speech Communication Association in 1994. Roach is a tenured associate professor in communication at Purdue University Calumet.