I totally agree with you point as to the judge or jury to some point. If you remember, it is this leaving to the judge or jury that got many people convicted and the loss of their insurance funds. This was the first thing tackled by the first 921 committee. You are asking a person with no knowledge to make a discission on something they know nothing about. Is this the best our profession can do? As to NFPA making a formal interpretation, well good luck getting that done.

Believe me I am not saying now, nor will I ever say NFPA 921 is absolute. I am tired of hearing the words consensus document. That is an NFPA play on words. Who is the consensus? It is surly not the entire fire investigation community. I do not agree with all the steps listed as the scientific method as it is found in 921. I agree it is your job as a witness to educate. For this reason, I want to use terms that id something they have experienced they can relate to. What I do not want to do is leading this to associate a term is true if it is not always true. When you use the term V pattern do you tell them that where this may be accurate as you are using it that it is not always accurate to use to define where a fire started? Do you not think they would understand if you were to just say the fire started at this location because the fuel (which was so and so) was ignited by this source of heat at this location?

I think each investigator should use what is best for him or her in their presentation. I would bet if you could take a survey of those involved in deciding where the fire started and why, they would say to do what you said, keep it simple. You start them off with a simple statement as to the location where the fire started and why it started. You would say here is where the fire started. It started when a, b, c material was ignited by this source of heat. If it is as simple as the fire starting in a refrigerator in the RV you can tell them if they look they will see that the burning was confined to this area. Then you could tell them what fuel was in that area to be ignited and what source of heat was there that could ignite that fuel.

I think we are getting away from Doug’s problem in that people area using multiple misconceptions on top of each other to make a factual statement. You cannot say his reasoning is wrong. It like saying if you have enough wrong things then you now have one right thing.

Jim Mazerat
Forensic Investigations Group