Fire Investigation 03
Fire Investigation 03 : (1) The Evolution of Fire Scene Inspection Technology: If one looks back to the mid-1970s and compares the state-of-the-art in fire investigation then with the state-of-the-art today, many important improvements will be noted. The 1980s and 90s were a time of very gradual change, as it became clear that many of the "rules of thumb" for fire investigation turned out to be based on anecdotal evidence at best and witchcraft at worst. In 1977, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) reported the results of a survey of fire investigators in a publication entitled Arson and Arson Investigation: Survey and Assessment. This report contains a compilation of the "indicators" of incendiary activity used by fire investigators at the time. The authors of the survey warned that none of the indicators had been scientifically validated and recommended a series of carefully conducted experiments to learn whether these indicators were (or were not) valid. Three years later, the National Bureau of Standards (NBS-now called the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST) produced a document called Fire Investigation Handbook, which repeated all of the indicators, and gave them the imprimatur of the most credible science and engineering institution on the planet. Unfortunately, none of the scientific experiments required to validate these indicators had been conducted. The NBS simply took the word of two instructors from the National Fire Academy, which resulted in numerous textbooks being written with the mythology of arson investigation permanently embedded. It would take more than two decades to undo the damage. In its 2009 report, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, the Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Science Community, made the same recommendation that the LEAA had made 32 years earlier. Some of that work is now taking place and will be discussed below. In 1985, the Standards Council of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA ) became concerned with the quality of the work product of fire investigators, and commissioned the Technical Committee on Fire Investigations. The Technical Committee was asked to draft a guideline for fire investigators, and that task took seven years. The first edition of NFPA 921, Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, was published in 1992
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