Providing public information during emergency response

Today my department responded to a house fire. This fire was very extensive. There are indications that the house may be totally lost. This, of course, will be determined following the investigation by fire investigators and insurance representatives.

Several news agencies were on scene at this fire. I was asked to respond to cover the public information aspect of the situation. I received information from the fire chief and proceeded to give statements to the area television and newspaper reporters on scene.

Media typically responsible and ethical

Typically, I am very pleased with these agencies. They do a fine job of reporting information as it is received. The relationships that we have developed over the years have been effective and realistic. However, today I find that one news agency has failed in its reporting. At least in the reporting that is provided on the agency web site. I have not seen the television coverage as yet, so I do not know if they may have made mistakes there, as well.

Shoddy reporting

Here is the information provided on the WHIO web site:

Did Restored Power Cause House Fire?

A woman in Washington Township got a call Wednesday afternoon, telling her that her house was on fire.

Authorities said a letter carrier on his daily route spotted the smoke while he was dropping off the mail on Viewpoint Drive.

Neighbors were shocked. Jean Mindlin said, “I’ve lived here 46 years, never seen a fire, period.”

Neighbor Darlene Mehbod said, “It’s very sad.”

It’s also the timing of the fire that has neighbors and firefighters concerned.

Rich Palmer of the Washington Twp. Fire Department said, “They had restored power to 1210 and 1240.”

According to Palmer, “You could have overheated chords, circuts plugged in surge when power comes on.”

The home was a total loss.

Falling down on the job

This is some of the worst reporting and coverage that I’ve noticed. The quotes attributed to me are paraphrased so poorly they make absolutely no sense. I stated that the power had been restored at 12:10 (as in p.m.). I then stated that the fire was reported to the fire department at 12:40 (p.m.).

There are typographical errors in the final attribution. And the information is misleading and taken completely out of context. I stated several times that this fire is under investigation and that the cause was yet undetermined. When the reporter asked what “might happen” when power is restored to a home after an outage, I mentioned that I could not speculate what ‘might happen.’

I advised that fires can start for a variety of reasons. In a very general manner, I cautioned that when residents finally have power restored that they should turn things on very gradually in their home. I mentioned that many things left on could cause some problems in the home if power is suddenly restored — such as overheated circuits, systems running at half phase, and too much current draw that might damage electronics in the home. The simple statement given online by this particular news agency is confusing, out of context, and potentially misleading.

I believe that news stations should hold themselves to the same standards of reporting on their web sites as they do in their newscasts. THIS example is a poor reflection of their capabilities.

I’m going back out to meet with some more TV crews to discuss last night’s school fire. I guess I’ll camp out there most of the day?

More Follow Up for News on 12seconds.tv