I’m not sure if there’s a big call for it or not, but any questions that are out there regarding firefighting, arson investigation, or fire/home safety in general, please feel free to fire away, (no pun intended).
Two questions:
Are you aware this in in the wrong forum?
Have you contacted a moderator and asked them to move it?
Is arson committed for profit, or do some arsonists set fires just for the thrill of it?
If moving too many threads in one day makes my head explode and a fire results, is that arson?
I was gonna smart-mouth Manny about his whinin’, but then I realized I’d be playing with fire.
Ooooo…
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No, I wasn’t aware of the forum faux pas.
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Thanks to manhattan.
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No, Manhattan, that’s fire by fricton.
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Stuy. Boo.
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Earl, Yes and Yes.
Arson for profit is quite a cottage industry, although quite hard to prove. The best you can do in about half the cases is cajole the insurance investigator to 86 the payment to the hopeful arsonist. This, in many cases will be far more devastating to him/her than going to jail since they lose everything. If you are able to get a confession, and can prove arson, you’ve also got fraud charges (depending how the suspect chose to file his/her claim to the insurance company) either mail fraud or wire fraud and if the place the arsonist chose to burn was occupied at the time, there are a number of personal crimes that may be applied (i.e. reckless endangerment, depraved indifference etc.) and if, all good forbid, a firefighter gets hurt or killed, there’s an entire new set of charges.
Thrill burners are careful, generally fearful malcontents, who enjoy the response from the fire departments. They are sometimes those who couldn’t make the cut on a police or fire department, and have a desire to exercise some control over these people. Further, they could be (although rare) sexually deviant, and obtain sexual gratification from firesetting. More often than not, the excitement-motivated firesetter is doing so for reasons of vanity or personal gain.
Pyromania as a defense has lost it’s strength as a defense over the past decade or so
How did you get your training?
A few months ago a new restaurant near my home burned to the ground. It had just been built but hadn’t opened yet. It was also in a dreadful location, a place that had been inhabited by one failed restaurant after another, in a shopping center that was clearly failing as well, thanks to the development of another, more popular shopping center nearby.
I gotta tell ya, as soon as I learned it had burned down, I thought “arson.”
The only real question in my mind is why they built a restaurant there in the first place. I mean, the shopping center is so far gone they can’t even gloss over the vacancies – their keystone grocery store left a long time ago, was replaced with another grocery chain which ALSO failed. It’s like, the pit of hell location.
Am I cynical SOB or what? Are these the sort of circumstances that make an arson investigator go “hmmm”?
Is it SOP to run at least a preliminary investigation? I’d guess there are certain flags, like obvious accelerant or a body, that demand investigation.
Do you always check out the financial status of a burned structure? I know the last time I had a car stolen, one of the first things the cops asked was whether or not it had a lien on it.
Are you a Fire Department employee? If so, how do you handle (or, is there) overlapping jurisdiction with the police in the case of a homocide related to an arson?
If you are F.D., did you work as a firefighter before becoming an arson investigator?
Are fires started by firefighters, including volunteers, very common?
Brachyrhynchos: 120 hours of class and lab time certified by the Illinois State Fire Marshal and 80 Hours of class and lab time at the National Fire Academy, Emmitsburg MD. 5 years of subsequent experience in investigations, 12 years total OTJ with a municipal FD, where I am still employed.
Captor: No, you’re not even a little cynical, those are exactly the type of circumstances that make me go “hmmm” A simple financial history of the owner though, would tell me one of three things, either; 1. Someone did no due diligence or market research before opening the place. 2. The owner was just stupid/careless. 3. Someone with a larger stake was looking for a loss (i.e. an investor) Of course, it depends directly on the cause of the burn, faulty equipment, accident, or, one of the biggest causes, poor housekeeping, would lessen the chance that the person would be investigated more thoroughly, and sometimes them believing that helps us out.
Ringo: All fires, at least here in Illinois demand origin and cause investigations according to the law. I teach basic fire cause and origin investigation to our line officers (Lt.'s and Capts) and firefighters so that in small or obvious fires, they can just shoot me a data card, and I can file it out of case. In the larger loss fires (like autos and homes with a lot of fire damage) I’m activated and when the investigation begins, a credit check is done automatically on the owner when the losses hit a certian amount, that information is gathered by the insurance companies as well. Regarding CFD’s or civilian fire deaths, the jurisdictional overlap is nil. I deal with fire and it’s behaviour, the cops deal with people and theirs. Fire deaths are very specific, either you die of smoke intake, (fire seldom kills, byproducts of fire however, are a different story) or you died before the fire started, and the fire happened to conceal that fact. I’ll tell you how and where a body burned, it’s up to the cops (and the ME) to find out when the victim died.
Hup: More common than we’d like, yes. More common in volunteers than in career firefighters by stats (i don’t have them in front of me, but I know that to be the case) It’s the same as the thrill torch, it’s a matter of vanity, either they start the fire to be a hero in its discovery, or to engage in its’ suppression, either way, it’s a sickening thing to discover. A number of years ago a place close to where I am had an incident like this one, the mayors’ son, who was also on the fire department, set a fire in an unoccupied church, whilst in a drunken stupor. (if only the federal laws were in place at the time, he’d still be in jail) He used materials from his own fire station to ingite the fire that burned the door and threshold of the church. He was caught, convicted, and sentenced to five years probation. If it were my considerable arse lighting the fires, I would still be in the pokey.
Hey, buttonjockey, coupla questions:
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Is your work exciting a la CSI?
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Do you do the forensic investigations yourself? ie analyse hair samples.
thanks
ST. Not really. Fire investigation is a dry kind of science. It’s exciting for me, but I like the stuff, the guys I teach, their eyes glaze over about half an hour into it. As far as the forensic stuff, yes, but only the gathering of evidence, not the processing. The Illinois State Police are kind enough to have a crime lab right here in Chicago, and legions of white coated scientists willing to analyze, spectrochromatize, and microscope any filthy little bit of evidence that I can dig up.
No problem.
Thank you for a fascinating thread buttonjockey308. I have a few questions:
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How easy is it to tell arson from an accident? If I, say, took my space heater and replaced the power cord with one insufficient to handle the required current, then ran said cord too near the sofa in the breakroom of my failing restaraunt, could you tell that it was deliberate?
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Is arson without accelerants at all common, and is it hard to diagnose? A gas can in the middle of the living room looks suspicious, but if I did some research is it hard to mimic “natural causes” in such a way as to be hard to trace?
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How often do you you think you mis-diagnose the cause of a fire?
Thanks!
buttonjockey - cool thread.
I am interested in Emilio Lizardo’s questions - bottom line: If someone needs a fire fast, they might have to compromise and start it in a way that offers clear clues. But what is someone has more time, and is willing to be patient and merely put the right ingredients in place and allow things to play out, much like EL offered by example? Just how detectable is that type of arson from natural fires? What other factors do you need to investigate to develop circumstantial context?
Thanks!
In the same vein as Emelio Lizardo and WordMan …
The closest thing I’ve ever personally seen of your kind of work is the film Backdraft.
I was wondering how accurate parts of the film are, so’s I can get an image of what you really do. Not so much the “correctness” of how the fires get around or anything, but accuracy as to how an investigation is handled at the scene and if Donald Sutherlan’s character is depicted accurately as a more loathsome firebug.
Crap. Sorry: Emilio.
Emilio;
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It’s not easy at all. The best arsonists use nothing more than lighters and commonly found materials, not to mention insurance companies still pay for “accidents”. Using your scenario, I wouldn’t necessarily know right away, but things would reveal themselves during the investigation, such as; your orders have been down in the past weeks, based on your bank deposits, you are out of credit with your suppliers, the important components of the kitchen are missing, things like that would allow me to classify the fire as suspicious, or even incendiary, thus creating doubt in the mind of the insurance company that maybe won’t cut you a check, even if I can’t arrest you for arson.
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The idea of a ‘natural causes’ fire is misunderstood. Nothing really ‘causes’ a structure or room and contents fire per se, fires usually require human intervention, what matters is the intent. You could mimic, however, poor housekeeping, out of code wiring, or a great many other accidental/electrical causes, and the insurance company might pay, once. Problem is, those who have the bent to torch their homes/residences, don’t do it just once, and that’s when we get 'em.
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My rate of incorrect origin determination is about 10%. My rate of incorrect cause determination is about 30%
Wordman;
Generally speaking, circumstantial evidence is both sinner and saint in arson cases. The offender in an arson case is, again generally speaking, either incredibly smart, or incredibly stupid, and circumstances may be enough to gently cajole a confession, or they cement the resolve of the suspect, so the area is a gray one, with a lot of roads leading back to it.
Fires set to look like they were accidental are quite difficult to prove, but with the civil burden not being as complete as the criminal one, the good guy can still win, despite not getting a conviction.
Gorgon:
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We don’t cause more fire damage and contaiminate the scene by spraying lighter fluid on burned areas and lighting it on fire. That’s what training is for.
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We don’t gloat at catching political figures in scandals publicly, that’s just asking for a pink slip.
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Ronald is a hollywood creation. He’s a rare breed as far as firesetters go. Pyromaniacs are quite rare indeed.