I think the question about classification came about when there was an evaluation as to the purpose of the document and how does classifications with into that purpose. If it is the committee’s purpose to limit the document to scientifically determining a cause for the fire, then the classification section is not needed. The problem here seems to be “set fires”. One can say the fire cause was due to human intervention without having to classifying the cause. There are many that think the investigation should be bifurcated. This means separated into two branches or parts. The first would be to determine what was the source of energy that allowed ignition to take place and what was the competent fuel that was first ignited. The second part is the motive, intent and classification. Here is where there is a difference between the task required based on the investigation being conducted for the public or private sector. It is more likely that the public sector investigator will be asked to develop the motive and intent than the private investigator. Most insurance companies do not request the private investigator to conduct sufficient background investigation to determine motive and intent. In most cases the company’s SIU’s conduct this aspect of the investigation. For a number of years the insurance companies have been successful with this approach. In some public jurisdictions, the fire department conducts the origin and cause investigation and law enforcement conducts the remaining investigation. This to has been successful.

I agree with you that evidence such as incendiary devices can support the finding that there was intent to destroy the building by fire. But the presence of this type of evidence does not in itself support the classification. I had a case where a father and son were charged with setting a fire. The evidence was the presence of what was considered an incendiary device. During the trial it was learned the father was supervising the son conducting an experiment that was part of the science project in the son’s text book from school. They had no prior knowledge as to the extent of fire this device would cause.

In the 1960’s and 1979’s most of the information now found in the Incendiary chapter were called red flags for arson. Over the years the profession has been able to debunk some of these red flags, such as the spalling of concrete but others such as the lack of contents remains. If a person has a fire and tells the insurance company there were most contents in the house at the time of the fire then what was actually there does it mean the fire was intentionally set. It may just be nothing more than the person inflating the content list to get more money from the insurance company. In and of itself does not support the conclusion of a set fire. Another example is a business has a fire start in rack storage where there is no natural ignition source. The owner of the company is depressed because of the reduction in revenues and is hear saying there are times when he would be better off if the business burned down. The person was charged and convicted with the setting of the fire. Never told to the court by the investigators was the fact that it was his company’s policy that anyone caught smoking in the warehouse would be fired. Also not told to the court during the trial was learned the public agency had investigated a number of fires in the storage racks that they attributed to smoking.

The other problem with teaching this information is that it is being put in the mine of the investigator that if one of these conditions are found during the scene examination that it is evidence of a incendiary fire. What is the chances that this information will not cause some degree of bias when it comes to classifying the cause of the fire. This is just a couple of examples how these red flags can cause persons with no intent to do something illegal to have to defend themselves in court.

Jim Mazerat
Forensic Investigations Group