Is there a belief that the fire departments a law enforcement agencies departments around the country and the management of those departments will accept a standard from NFPA as to policy and procedures for their departments. As an example, NFPA 1500 specifies the minimum requirements for an occupational safety and health program for fire departments or organizations that provide rescue, fire suppression, emergency medical services, hazardous materials mitigation, special operations, and other emergency services. How many fire departments have adopted this document as a mandatory requirement for their department?

There was a survey of personal from 99 fire departments attending the National Fire Academy. Only 40% of these departments stated their departments were using this standard. Of the 40%, 60% of these “progressive departments,” which stress health and safety, did not fully comply with the most comprehensive health and safety standard ever developed for the fire service. There are many more NFPA standard relating to fire department policy and procedure. Most of this are not being followed by the majority of the fire departments. Of the fire departments registered with the U.S. Fire Administration, 88% or full volunteer fire departments.

Now let’s look at who does the fire departments task mostly to determine the origin and cause of fires. It is not a fire investigator from a Fire Investigation Unit. It is the company officer. Is this document going to mandate that only certified fire investigators will be allowed to investigate all fires? If this is the case, I would suggest 90% of the fires will not be investigated. Is this what the document intending?

The scope of the committee is where I haves some concern based on past experience in the public sector. NFPA in the past has developed a number of standards including fully paid fire departments, combination departments and fire prevention units which include inspections, investigations, safety and public education. I will not say there is no department using these standards but that I know of none. All the ones I know of are using the ISO Public Protection Classification. Where this ISO standard addresses methodology and level of training for fire investigators (NFPA 921 and 1033), it only suggest that the investigator met the requirements of these documents.

As I said, I can find no NFPA document that is considered a standard for internationally recognized accreditation. Is it the intent of those behind the development of this document to have it become an ISO standard for accreditation? I can not believe that any law enforcement agency or fire department is going to accept the NFPA standard as their policy and procedure for fire investigations.

The OSAC subcommittee attempted to stop ISO 17020 standard from being used to accredit fire investigation units. The subcommittee stated, “17020 was developed for bodies inspecting to determine compliance with expectations. This is not useful for use in forensic investigations in which we seek to avoid any expectations. There is potential value in a standard for forensic investigation, but sadly this document does not address this. 17020 does not address the development of findings from an inspection. The work product is simply a listing of variations from the expectation.” It is my understanding that OSAC rejected the appeal by the subcommittee.

I am not saying that 17020 may be too generic as suggested by some. What I am saying is that if the end product is not an ISO standard it will not be internationally recognized. I just believe from past experience, from the point of the public sector, every time the NFPA has developed a standard with the idea of dictating to the public sector policy and procedures it has been ignored or only partly adopted. In most cases it has not been made mandatory.

I totally believe in accreditation. I working with international companies I see the importance they place on an ISO Accreditation. If the goal is to have an internationally recognized standard for fire investigation units and companies I believe there is no choice but to do it through it through an organization like OSAC.

Jim Mazerat
Forensic Investigations Group