Names and notification
When a name appears here, and why it usually does not.
We do not publish the name of anyone killed or seriously injured until the agency involved confirms that next of kin have been notified.
This is the oldest rule in this field and the least forgivable to break. A family learning that their firefighter is dead from a website — because a scanner said a name and something repeated it — is a harm that cannot be corrected afterwards. No correction, no apology and no takedown undoes it.
So on this site it is not a judgement made under deadline. A name in a casualty context is refused by the software unless a notification record exists, entered by a person, naming the agency that confirmed it. Absent that record the piece cannot publish with the name in it at all.
You will therefore read "a firefighter", "a member of the department" or "a patient" in places where other outlets have already printed a name. That is deliberate. We would rather be second than be the reason a family found out the wrong way.
The same applies to photographs and to any detail specific enough to identify somebody — a unit number, a rank plus a station, a vehicle.