Just before midnight Sunday, fire tore through the Na Ladprao beer hall in Bangkok. At least 27 people are dead and 63 more were taken to hospital, 22 of them in critical condition. Officials said many of the victims were found in the restrooms at the back of the pub — as far from the flames as the building let anyone get. * If you read about it in the US, you almost certainly read the exact same words as everyone else. NPR's headline: "Fire breaks out at a pub in Bangkok, killing at least 27 people, officials say." The Washington Post's: the same headline, trimmed of its "officials say." Not two similar stories — the same Associated Press wire story, same anonymous byline, republished word for word on site after site. * That's not laziness. It's arithmetic. Almost no American outlet keeps a reporter in Bangkok anymore, so when 27 people die there, the entire US press corps is effectively one AP byline. One set of eyes, one notebook, one draft of history — photocopied. * About that draft. "Fire breaks out." In wire English, fires break out the way rain starts: nobody does them, they simply occur. The only cause in the copy so far is a musician telling Thailand's prime minister he saw smoke coming from a circuit breaker near the stage before the lights went out. The investigation is ongoing. * Al Jazeera at least wrote its own sentence — "Fire engulfs popular Bangkok pub, killing 27 people and injuring 63" — but look closely and it's the same sentence. The fire is still the character doing everything. The building, the wiring, whoever signed off on the wiring: not pictured. * Here's why the grammar will matter next week. Deadly nightclub fires are almost never acts of God. Somewhere down the line there is usually wiring, or crowding, or a door — 27 people rarely die in a pub because fire is fast; they die because getting out was slow. "Fire breaks out" is a fine first draft at midnight. The real question is whether anyone files a second draft — because if the one wire service on the scene doesn't ask who owned that circuit breaker, most of the American press never will. They have no one there to ask.