City on Fire (1979)

There are a million stories in every large city each and every day, the following some in this large city this morning. The mayor William Dudley and widowed philanthropist and socialite Diana Brockhurst-Lautrec are the guests of honor at the dedication for the city's new Brockhurst Hospital, named after Brockhurst-Lautrec's deceased first husband, the former governor. The Chief of Staff Dr. Frank Whitman, a ladies man and ex-lover of Brockhurst-Lautrec, may cause a ruckus at the ceremony if asked to speak as he would accuse the corrupt mayor of playing politics in the deficiencies of the facility. The married mayor and Brockhurst-Lautrec are also unaware that a scandal may soon brew in photographs having been taken by investigative reporter Terry James of them in a romantic embrace. Some children are experimenting with smoking, one for the very first time. Herman Stover, an employee at the Manson Refinery, built in the middle of the city under the Mayor's approval, has just been fired for refusing to accept a departmental transfer, with the promotion he was hoping for given to someone else. With her producer Jimbo making the ultimate decisions based partly on her situation, local news anchor Maggie Grayson, who self-medicates with alcohol to deal with her aging in a hypercritical media landscape, is covering the hospital dedication ceremony as well as a tragic residential building fire. As Fire Captain Harrison Risden's unit is dealing with the blaze, his father, Fire Chief Albert Risden, has to find backup due to the massive nature of the blaze. These and other stories converge when the actions of one of the aforementioned players leads to a massive explosion, with the city ostensibly on fire. While everybody deals with the increasingly growing fire which has the potential to engulf the city, the most crucial possible impending threat being everyone at the hospital being killed by an associated issue, the aforementioned stories have the potential to live or die with the fire.