Fire Origin and Cause: the dilemma facing today’s fire service

November 20, 2012

Guest Post by Mr. Jeff Allen, Chief Investigator for Irmo Fire District While we strive to increase the level of accuracy and professionalism by furthering our skills and knowledge in this challenging area, we are faced with many new guidelines and restrictions on what we do and how we do it. Technical committees with a majority opinion originating from the private insurance/investigation industries have added terminologies and procedures that can make fire origin and cause very complex for the volunteer fire service today. (And trust me, it’s getting to be no picnic for those of us who do this for a living either.) In South Carolina, as is the case throughout our great country, 80% of our fire service is non paid (I hesitate to say volunteer as the other 20% of us volunteered to be paid firefighters, but I digress..). The hundreds of hours of firefighting training that is required to maintain certification just about bogs down the individual who hasn’t got much time left from two jobs, a family, his church and any hobby he might find a little time to enjoy. Getting involved at that level in the ever more complex area of origin and cause seems out of the question. Thus the dilemma facing today’s fire service. Your department responds, extinguishes the fire, and is now required to attempt a determination of the origin and cause of that fire. What do you do? How do you do it? As we know, there are only two causes of fires; accidental and incendiary (arson). In order to prove the fire is incendiary, we must prove it was not accidental. If you make a mistake during your origin and cause scene ‘review’, what liability issues are you exposing yourself to? If the fire is accidental and the cause is a product or material that the insurance company can subrogate against its manufacturer to recover costs, how much can you touch/modify/move before you open up a lawsuit against your fire department for spoliation of evidence? How far do you go in digging the fire scene before you determine what the origin and cause is? Do you need to dig the scene at all? If the fire is accidental (and even that takes knowledge and skills to determine) can we call it electrical and go home? The answer is, maybe. If we determine at some point that the fire is incendiary (arson), what do we do as a volunteer fire department? Most counties and municipalities don’t have law enforcement agencies with trained arson investigators. This quite often further confuses the issue. Many paid fire departments have been properly signed off for their in-house investigators to obtain police certification but are now getting serious push-back from the Criminal Justice Academy that has no reason not to offer them the needed training. This only serves to further frustrate those of us who take this issue seriously and becomes a disservice to the citizens we are sworn to protect. This is the dilemma facing today’s fire service. Other than in the areas of our state where departments have dedicated fire/arson investigators how can we approach this to the satisfaction of all stakeholders? With that question posed I ask, what is the solution to this dilemma? Let me offer the following two thoughts. One area that might need to be explored is that of a ‘pool’ of investigators. We cannot and should not expect our good friends at SLED to respond and conduct all of our origin and cause determinations, so why not have a component of our statewide mobilization efforts directed at the specialization of origin and cause. If someone has a fire in Hampton County (for example) and needs people to look at the scene, they can request trained investigators from the ‘pool’. Another area that might be possible is for the State Fire Marshal’s Office to have a team of well trained fire investigators who can assist any department with origin and cause, and when the scene is determined to be arson, initiate contact of SLED for a response. There may be other very workable solutions to this issue. We need to pay attention to this issue before it becomes the nightmare it could be. I open the floor…thoughts, comments, concerns…