My Mom is 88 years old and gets nostalgic at this time of year; on August 15, 1948, her younger sister died in a house fire. Mom is the second oldest of 10 kids - not the happiest of households, very strict...well, abusive...parents. She recalls that day as oppressively hot and humid and she spent most of the afternoon ironing the family laundry. A neighbor from across the street knocked on the front door and asked "Do you have an orange light on in your attic?" Her father (Glenn Fahey) opened the door to the stairs leading to the attic and "balls of rolling dark smoke" came tumbling down. Diane, Mom's younger sister, had just recently gotten hip-length casts off of both her legs, which had been broken when she got hit by a car. She was still unsteady on her feet and firefighters found her under a bed upstairs (where she'd apparently "hidden" in fear).
Anyway, Mom has mentioned many times over the years that she wished she'd saved all the newspaper articles about the fire. Thirty-some years ago I found a couple of articles in the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News and even some out-of-state papers on microfilm that mentioned the fire and I printed them. But those copies have long since turned black and are unreadable. Sad as the story is, she does seem to want to read about it as it was reported at the time. Below is a link to one front-page blurb I found; the fire occurred on August 15, 1948, but most news stories would probably be dated August 16 or later.
Try the library of Congress or call the papers, if the are still in business. A lot if times they can help you out. And almost all of them keep an archive.
Good luck!
I know my local library has digitized copies of the newspaper online going back to the late 19th century. Maybe yours does too! Ours (Austin, TX) offers free subscriptions to various online news clipping troves for free with a library card.