First, I have not been able to find any legal length of time for fire investigation storage records. What I have found is that for different profession there may be a federal or state statutory requirements. Where I agree with John that with the computer age it is easy to store documents. That being said, one must consider who is doing the storage. The private sector is different from the public sector. In most public sectors the storage of records has nothing to do with the investigator. The decisions are being made by a person in an IT department that knows nothing about fire investigation where in the private sector the decision about storage is being made by someone involved in the operation. In the public sector there is a legal requirement to keep the records confidential. That means that there must be limited access to the documents. If the records are being stored on the government’s system, there must be special access restriction build into the program being used for the storage.

The fire investigation unit in the county where I live store their records on the system that is uses by all the governmental agencies. Their storage capacity is based on the memory of the server. I know of twice where the material to be stored exceeded the amount of storage available. The least expensive way to correct this problem is not to buy and install additional memory for the system, but to eliminate the older records from the storage. This decision again is made by the IT department, and there is the chance that the investigation unit is never consulted. With this situation the government sets up an arbitrary amount of time to store records.

I know this is passing the buck, but I would rely on the opinions of others. The actin I would take are:

• Consult with your legal team. Certain record series have retention periods which are defined in Federal or State statutes, while others are established by regulatory agencies and industry standards.
• Consider the value (the usefulness or significance) of the record to your agency and to the public. A record series may have administrative, legal, financial, informational or historical value. A record's value may decrease or increase over its lifetime.
This is the retention requirements for the public sector in Louisiana.

All existing records or records hereafter accumulated by the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, corrections services, pertaining to any adult offender shall be retained and may not be destroyed until after six years from the date the full-term sentence imposed upon such offender expires, or six years from the date of death of the offender, whichever occurs first.

The public records of a prosecuting agency, pertaining to a criminal prosecution that results in a conviction, in a manner other than a plea, shall be retained for a period of three years from the date on which a court of appeal affirms the conviction, the Louisiana Supreme Court denies writs, or the Louisiana Supreme Court makes its final ruling on the appeal, whichever occurs last.

The Louisiana Fire is part of the Public Safety and Corrections.

Jim Mazerat
Forensic Investigations Group