Who is in charge?

When the owner or occupier of any property finds that there has been a fire in his or her property they frequently find themselves excluded and confused. The Police and Fire Service appear to close ranks and the insurance loss adjuster(s) treats them with suspicion. The owner often does not know who to turn to or who is in overall charge of a property which, up until the fire had been entirely his domain and responsibility.
It is an unpleasant truth that owners and occupiers are often suspects or, at the very least, biased witnesses. The various agencies concerned with investigation of the fire have little choice but to treat them as such.
But who is in charge?

Probably the clearest scenario is, or should be, where there is any suspicion of crime. The Police have full primacy of the scene. The crime scene is entirely under thier control. But who is in charge? Owners and occupiers may see uniformed officers at the entrance controlling access, Fire Service investigators, Scenes of Crime Officers (SOCOs), Forensic scientists and others on the scene some of whom will wish to question him. But who is in charge?
At all crime scenes it will be a Detective Constable (CID) officer. There is no minimum rank but at large loss or fatal fires it will almost certainly be a Detective Chief Inspector. Fire is not a volume crime for the Police so the detective will delegate various tasks and some agencies may behave as if they are in charge.

Where there is no crime the Fire Service has a legal right to conduct an investigation, interview witnesses and remove relevant samples if they wish. The only proviso is that they must give 24 hours notice in writing of thier intention.
The person in charge is the Fire Service Incident Commander if still present or the Watch Commander on whose ground the fire occurred. The Fire Service investigator will be the person who the owner will actually deal with but that officer acts as an agent of the Incident Commander or Watch Officer.

Where there is no Police or Fire Service presence then the owner will probably be dealing with the Insurance agencies. Now it gets really confusing!
The Insurer appoints a Loss adjuster.
The Loss adjuster may appoint an independent fire investigation agency.
That agency may appoint specialists.
Insurers of other affected premises or of other related policies such as business loss may appoint thier own Loss adjusters (and thus other agencies).
Manufacturers or suppliers of equipment may find themselves implicated in the incident and thus also need to attend and to appoint agents on their behalf.
The owner may be approached by Loss Assessors who may also appoint independent investigation agencies.
There can be six or more separate interests in one fire all requiring information from the scene and from the owner.
But who is now in charge? It is often very difficult to determine. The owner must asscertain the identity and interests of ALL parties on his property but should defer all questions to the Loss Adjuster representing either the property or the contents loss, whichever is the greater.

The owner often feels like he or she is the accused. It requires firmness and patience to ascertain exactly who is is in charge. Only then can the owner get back on track to feeling that the property is still theirs. Because actually, it is the owner who should always be in charge. That authority is usurped temporarily, allbeit with good reason, by the various agencies above at various times during and after a fire event.

Unless there is good reason to do otherwise I treat owners as part of the team. They have the best knowledge of the history of the building and occupants. They can save me much time and effort at any fire scene and help me to get to the root cause or at least to confirm or support any hypothesis. Of course there are cautions because, as I said at the beginning, they are biased witnesses. But they are important and, after all, it is their building.