Leslie Nielsen & Henry Fonda in “City on Fire“ (1979)

The corrupt city mayor, William Dudley (Leslie Nielsen) has allowed an oil refinery to be built in the town’s center, far from any river, lake or reservoir. On one typically hot summer day, Herman Stover (Jonathan Welsh), a dangerously disturbed employee at the refinery, has been denied an expected promotion and in addition, finds himself fired after refusing a departmental transfer. The disgruntled ex-employee decides to take his revenge by sabotaging the oil refinery. He opens the valves to the storage vats and their interconnecting pipes, flooding the area and sewers with gasoline and chemicals, setting off a flame that causes massive explosions at the refinery, destroying it and spreading a mushroom-cloud of flame, a blaze which engulfs an entire the entire metropolis. People try to either fight the fire or flee as it spreads throughout the city. The newly built hospital, which went up during the mayor’s crooked administration, is shoddily built and poorly equipped. The head