The Investigation of Fires Across the Pond

 

Station Officer Mike Beasley London Fire Brigade.

 

The history of fire fighting is similar the world over, from serious disasters and major loss of life we have formulated our approaches to fire fighting and fire prevention. The task of determining the cause of the fire was normally left to the Officer in Charge. The major difference between our procedures is that here in the United Kingdom; the Fire Service has no statutory power to investigate the cause of the fire and gathers information for statistical purposes only. Those of us who work within the Fire Investigation field have attempted on many occasions to explain that this interpretation is a negative approach since we are required by law to give fire prevention advice to the public. How can we provide advise on the prevention of fires if we don’t know what causes the fires in the first place?

The standard procedure adopted by many fire brigades was that a senior Officer, often with fire prevention experience, would be designated as an investigator and would attend incidents when requested.

 

In London we were fortunate to have a Chief Fire Officer who had seen the benefits of a specialist investigation team whilst working in the Far East and decided that a similar system would be set up in London. Our first team in the early 1980’s consisted of a dedicated driver who would drive the investigation vehicle to the fire scene and a senior fire prevention officer. So began my career as a fire investigator.

 

In January 1981 a 20-year-old male was convicted in Yorkshire of 26 cases of manslaughter and eleven cases of arson. The fires had occurred between 1973 and 1979. With the exception of the last fire, none of the previous fatal fires were suspected at the time of being caused by arson. At the conclusion of the case discussions were made between the Police, Fire Brigade and the Forensic Science service to see if procedures between the services could be improved.

 

The conclusions highlighted the limited resources of the individual services and the inadequacies of the departments, highlighting such areas as training and better communications. This was really the first formal attempt to define the future of fire investigation in the U.K.

 

In 1983 the Chief here in London completed the task of forming dedicated fire investigation units and 40 keen and enthusiastic volunteers were assigned.

 

In those early years it was difficult to provide formalized training. There was only one other fire department in this country with a dedicated training facility. the initial training materials consisted largely of a combination of procedures from many other fire departments together with a mix of current legislation and city codes.

 

Fire investigation within the United Kingdom has been slow to develop compared with the United States and very few dedicated reference books were available here.

 

This was perhaps fortunate, as we were not exposed to the many early reference documents now considered as misleading.

 

A visiting retired fire investigator from New York suggested we consider membership of both the National Association of Fire Investigators and the International Association of Arson Investigators. I joined both organisations but I was particularly drawn towards NAFI and their Certification Program. I have found over the years that I can always contact the NAFI office with questions and problems and they seemed to share the same enthusiastic hunger to assist and to attempt to find answers. In later years we have been fortunate to have, training staff, directors and members visit and as with all investigators, they have been keen to share their experiences and knowledge with us.

 

We were able to formulate much of our procedures and policies from those early days.

 

We have always had a forensic facility, which enables detailed examination of items or scenes both on and off the fire ground. We have a considerable database of fires caused by domestic appliances such as refrigerators, cookers and washing machines.

 

The investigation of arson has always been a police reference but as with many other areas of the world, the increase in deliberate fire setting is changing government’s views and fire department expertise is being channelled into all aspects of fire prevention.

 

NFPA 921: Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, is to be found in almost every fire department here and many external training facilities covering fire investigation are adopting much of the best practise found within. Its use here in Europe is steadily growing and I can see its adoption as the principle definitive guide.

 

As to our future, well anyone who has been in public service will know how policies can change but I think we have an important contribution until well past my "sell by date".