Fire investigation - Who does it and who does it best?

Fire investigators originate from very diverse backgrounds. Broadly speaking there is the Public service route and there is the academic route.

The public service route is predominantly via a career in the fire service. All fire service investigators will have the distinct and significant advantage of experience of live fire and fresh fire scenes. Hands on fire fighting and command and control will also enhance their skills. But few fire services maintain full time investigators. Most perform the duty in addition to other middle management tasks. The skills of those individuals may thus be somewhat diluted. There are many who believe that the best fire investigators are those with a fire service background. Whilst I would generally subscribe to that view it must be pointed out that the fire service background should be substantial and of good quality. 10 years service at stations commanding over 3000 calls per year will be better than at stations commanding less than 1000. But what percentage of those calls are primary fires (In buildings)?.

The academic route is generally by employment of graduates by private companies. There are only three such companies in the UK. The graduates would normally have science or engineering based degrees. These companies seem to work on the ethos that fire dynamics is a science thus it is best investigated by scientists. The companies provide the graduates with a basic commercially available fire investigation training course. They then shadow an existing company practitioner until judged to be suitable to work solo. They have no real fire experience or background and are effectively taught in-house. But what is the subject of their degree? Sometimes it is not relevant to fire at all! Fire is a subject that encompasses many aspects of all of the sciences so is a Chemistry degree sufficient? It is these practitioners that almost exclusively investigate fire on behalf of the insurance industry. This is because the insurance industry utilise only these private companies and appear unaware or unwilling to seek alternative practitioners.

Other routes to fire investigation are:

Forensic Science: There are are some forensic science companies that provide various analysis services, principally for the Police. Many of these companies also promote fire investigation services and some specialise. The background of the practitioners will again be exclusively academic.

It must be noted here that the term "Forensic Scientist" has become very much misused since the advent of TV's CSI etc. Universities now offer courses in "forensic Science" but, essentially, there is no such thing!. There is no career path. A scientist, just like any other specialist trade, may put his or her skills to use in a forensic manner but in such circumstances it is more accurate to express those skills in terms of the actual science. Thus he or she may be a "Forensic Chemist" or a "Forensic Geologist" etc.

Police: Few practitioners have originated purely via the Police but in doing so they have usually served for a substantial period as Scenes of Crime Officers and supplemented their knowledge voluntarily.

Which is best?
This very subjective. All practitioners work to broadly the same accepted National Operating Procedures and read the same books and reference material. All seek the same information: cause of fire, fire spread, liability etc. but it is not uncommon for investigators at the same scene to disagree. This clearly reflects their varied knowledge, learning, experience and ability.

No one investigator in the world possesses ALL the necessary knowledge and experience to single-handedly determine EVERY cause accurately over a full working lifetime. I once heard on a TV documentary a US fire investigator state "In 35 years I have never yet returned a cause as 'Unknown'". He lost all credibility with that statement in my eyes.

The trick is to know and accept your limitations. Fire Service investigators will sometimes call upon a scientist or other specialist to assist with certain aspects. Sadly I have not yet seen an occasion where an academic based investigator has called upon a fire service based expert to assist with real fire burn pattern interpretation. It is a skill that cannot be learned from books alone. Besides, who wrote the books?

So. If you need a fire investigator you must quiz in detail to ensure that the person you engage has the skills to deal with your incident. This is particularly true for legal teams seeking expertise on casework only. Interpretation of reports, statements and photographs without access to the fire scene is a particular skill that, to my knowledge, nobody is formally trained for in this field.