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The Dubious Science of Arson Investigation · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: should know. And before we start, Chuck, I want to
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: take a moment to take the opportunity to take the
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: chance over wishing you a happy birthday.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I did March same day Caesar was stabbed. Can't get
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: over there.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Anyone, anyone famous gets stabbed on your birthday. I don't
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: think so.
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  Speaker 2: No, definitely not.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: All right, Well we'll have to change that by stabbing you.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: That was sinister. I even wished you happy birthday and
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: look what I get? I get a stabbing throw. I
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: know what has become of us?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Chuck, thanks man, the Big five to three. Such a
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: notable birthday.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like, Also does it feel any different
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: than the No? I feel like. Also we need to
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: give a retroactive happy birthday to Jerry too from last month.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Happy birthday, Jerry.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: You know I did the ultimate fifty three year old
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: guy thing for my birthday. I went to Athens, Georgia
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: for two Bob Dylan shows. Wow, that were exactly alike.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Were they really he played the same show.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Bob Dylan does it say like, oh, let me
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: mix it up for if anyone wants to come the
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: second night.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm actually surprised. I could totally see him playing
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: different shows depending on his mood or whatever he felt
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: like that night.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: No, well that, I mean there is something to that.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: But he's eighty three, has got his set locked in right.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Really, he's thirty years older than.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: You, I know, and he's still playing live music.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: That's awesome. Could you understand a word? He said? Uh?
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was very a vocal forward set actually, like
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: some real quiet music, and his voice was out front
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: in the mix. I've seen him dyling a lot. It's
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: always you never know what you're gonna get, so it's
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: always That's part of the fun being a Dylan fan
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: is like, Ooh, I wonder what he's going to be
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  Speaker 1: like this time.
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  Speaker 2: Is he in a bad mood tonight? No?
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  Speaker 1: He was great. He's old though, man, But yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Eighty three is very old to beginning on stage and
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  Speaker 2: playing how long of a set.
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  Speaker 1: Like an hour and a half seventeen eighteen songs he played?
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  Speaker 1: He plays piano full time now, which is sort of
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  Speaker 1: the new change. Okay, but he stands. I've never seen
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: anyone do this. I've seen people stand at a keyboard,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: but I've never seen anyone stand behind a grand piano
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  Speaker 1: the entire time.
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  Speaker 2: Basically, that is unusual.
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  Speaker 1: He would sit a little bit, but he'd sit for
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: like six or seven seconds that he popped right back up. Wow,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: that was really.
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  Speaker 2: Interesting going on with him. That's very it's interesting.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Anyway, we're here to talk about Arson Investigation, and big
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: thanks to Livia for her help with this, because you know,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I was just kind of keen on, like, hey, Lvia
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: put together an article on like how that works and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: how they figure out if someone burns something down, and
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: she came back pretty quickly and she's like, oh, chuck,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: guess what it turns out? Like we can talk a
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: little bit about that. But the real story here is
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: the fact that Arson Investigation, for most of its time
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  Speaker 1: as a thing, has been a lot of sort of witchcraftybs. Yeah, folklore,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: And that's the real story.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, mysticism, made up intuition is probably about the kindest
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: way you can describe how it was for decades.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Like did you see backdraft?
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: No? I didn't Actually, isn't that like a Ron Howard.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Jam Yeah, back in the day. But de Niro plays
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: a Arson investigator who is very much fits and you
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: know he apparently hung out with like three or four
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Arson investigators and kind of got his performance from them. Sure,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: which makes total sense now that I've read this, because
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of like not mysticism, but really
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: like you know, smelling something and like sniffing something. He
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: chipped off of a wall, putting.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Your fingers on the railroad tracks.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really corny lines. Like one of his corny lines is,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: you know, the only way to kill it is to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: love it a little bit. Man. So it's very much
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  Speaker 1: in line with what we found out here, which was
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  Speaker 1: that Arson investigation has long been just not scientific.
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  Speaker 2: No, and there's like we're not just here to poke
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  Speaker 2: fun at Arson investigators because they used unscientific methods. The
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  Speaker 2: big problem with this is those unscientific intuitive methods have
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: been proven time and time again to be just utterly wrong,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: but they're used still to this day in some jurisdictions
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  Speaker 2: to put people away sometimes for like sometimes to death.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Some people have been put to death under the junk
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  Speaker 2: science that arson investigation is and has been for decades
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  Speaker 2: and has only recently started to really kind of come
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: in line and become a scientific endeavor.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, so big thanks, Olivia said to a
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: couple of gentlemen, Douglas Starr and David gran They wrote
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: some pretty great pieces, Douglas Starr for Discoverer and David
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: grand for The New Yorker.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Can I just say David Grant's New Yorker articles called
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: trow By Fire about Cameron Todd Willingham and his wrongful execution.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: I think yeah, basically everybody should read that article at
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: some point in decuren their life. It's just gut wrenching.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, great, great investigation, great journalism. And so let's
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: get going here. I guess the first thing we should
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  Speaker 1: say is that the first people to get involved in
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  Speaker 1: arson investigation were not scientists, Like it was sort of
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  Speaker 1: developed as a thing by firefighters, by cops, by law
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  Speaker 1: enforcement generally, and not people who understood the scientific method.
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  Speaker 1: The first book about fire investigation was called Tiredstigations Very
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  Speaker 1: Appropriate No Colin. It was published in nineteen forty five
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  Speaker 1: by Harry retheret of the Fire Underwriter's Investigation Bureau of
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  Speaker 1: Canada and it was very much written for an audience
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  Speaker 1: of law enforcement to be like, all right, here's your
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  Speaker 1: handbook if you want to prove arson.
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  Speaker 2: Right. That's the big problem with it is in addition
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  Speaker 2: to it basically being like old wives tales and folklore,
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  Speaker 2: it came from the position like, if you're investigating this,
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  Speaker 2: if you're using this book, you're trying to prove arson
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  Speaker 2: not You're trying to figure out what started a fire,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: and it may or may not have been arson. It's
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  Speaker 2: here's what to look for for arson. And the problem
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  Speaker 2: is is a lot of really common features that are
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  Speaker 2: found after a fire we're attributed wrongly to arson. And
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  Speaker 2: this is where it started to spread all the way
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  Speaker 2: back in nineteen forty five.
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  Speaker 1: You know what a better title would have been, What
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: What to Expect when You're Expecting Arson?
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  Speaker 2: Was an all time great chuck, Oh.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you, I just thought of that. So that book
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  Speaker 1: was sort of the standard until nineteen sixty nine. About
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: twenty five years later or so, I got any Paul
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  Speaker 1: Kirk biochemists this time and forensic scientists at the University
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: of cal Berkeley, published a different book called Fire Investigation.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Well, it didn't have the s so it must have
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: been the prequel.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this one should have been called Fire Investigation Colon.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: You won't believe how much has changed.
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  Speaker 2: So yeah, So Paul Kirk, being a scientist, he's like, no,
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  Speaker 2: you really want to track down what started the fire
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  Speaker 2: and then start making your assumptions after you've collected evidence
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  Speaker 2: and analyzed it. Don't start from the premise that this
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  Speaker 2: is arson and then look for signs that support your premise.
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  Speaker 2: That's wrong. That's not how science works. The problem is is,
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  Speaker 2: like Paul Kirk was like, use the scientific method, and
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: the fire investigators said to Paul, Paul, there's not a
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  Speaker 2: lot of science for us to compare our findings against someone.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Help help nanny state, and the nanny States swooped in
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  Speaker 2: and improved everything forever.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. About eight years later or so after that book,
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven, there was a government report that agreed, hey,
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  Speaker 1: there's not a lot of stuff going on, and so
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  Speaker 1: there were a couple of guides put out Arson and
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  Speaker 1: Urs Investigation in seventy seven, which was based on surveys
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  Speaker 1: from leading investigators, and then Fire in the Fire Investigation
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  Speaker 1: Handbook from nineteen eighty and we should just kind of
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  Speaker 1: read through like this quick list, because this was the
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  Speaker 1: general thinking of like how you can tell if it's
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  Speaker 1: arson if these things are there in the burned house.
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  Speaker 1: I'll do the first one. Everyone knows this. The most
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  Speaker 1: severely burned area of the house is where it started.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it just makes sense since that had the opportunity
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  Speaker 2: to burn the longest, so it burned the hardest.
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  Speaker 1: Rights Totally, all these makes sense.
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  Speaker 2: Also, heat rises, which means fire rises and smoke rises,
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  Speaker 2: so the ceiling is always the most burned part of
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  Speaker 2: any given room, which they call compartments in fire investigation lingo,
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  Speaker 2: and that if you find burned floors, that automatically says
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  Speaker 2: an accelerant was used, because you dump accelerate on the
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  Speaker 2: floor and light it, and that's how the floor gets charred.
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  Speaker 2: Telltale sign if you find a charred floor, an accelerant
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  Speaker 2: was used.
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  Speaker 1: Also, if you see a puddle shaped char on that floor,
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  Speaker 1: that's another telltale sign for liquid because molke spreads out.
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  Speaker 1: If you see a V shaped soot mark on the wall,
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  Speaker 1: that is going to literally point to the origin of
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: the fire.
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  Speaker 2: Right. And another one that kind of was an umbrella
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  Speaker 2: category for some subcategories is that an accelerant fueled fire
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  Speaker 2: burns hotter than any other kind of fire. It also
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  Speaker 2: burns faster as a result, So that means that all
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: sorts of weird stuff happens in a hotter, faster fire.
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  Speaker 2: For example, something that they call crazed glass, which is
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  Speaker 2: glass that has this weird webbing of cracks through it,
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  Speaker 2: which they're like, is again an indicator of a very hot,
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  Speaker 2: fast fire, which indicates an accelerant was used. So you
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  Speaker 2: find glass with webs in it, that is a surefire
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  Speaker 2: indicator that somebody started this fire using some sort of
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  Speaker 2: accelerant or fuel.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, they said, that's us. It's craze, And they went,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: don't you mean glaze. I said, now, let's just call
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: it craze since it's so close to another glass term.
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  Speaker 2: Right, he goes, I hadn't thought about that. That makes
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: it even better.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: So Nixon, believe it or not, kind of got things
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  Speaker 1: going in nineteen seventy three when there was a report
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: from that administration that fires caused more than eleven billion
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  Speaker 1: dollars in damage, killed twelve thousand people in nineteen seventy three.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of this was found out to be exaggerated,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: but it didn't matter because that kind of lit a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: match no pen intended under the governments. But to get
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: to get into this, and they created the and funded
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: the Center for Fire Research, which is when they basically said,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: all right, let's get one hundred engineers to really look
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: at this from an objective point of view and come
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: back to us with some good stuff.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the early things that came out of
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: this that was really groundbreaking was called the Cone calorimeter,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: and it was invented by a guy with the wonderful
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: name of y Tennis Bob Ruscus, who is a fire
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: safety expert to this day. And the Cone calorimeter is
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: essentially like a vent hood, a giant vent hood that
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: has a ton of sensors attached to it, and you
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: set something on fire, say like a specific kind of couch,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: and it records all sorts of different things, the chemical
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: composition of the gases that are released of the smoke,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: how hot it burns, how long it burns. It even
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: has a scale so you can measure you can compare
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: the weight of the sook compared to the weight of
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: like what the what the furniture was like before it
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: caught fire, and you could take all this and put
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: it in a database. Like what you're doing now is
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: carrying out repeatable experiments to produce data that people can
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: use to compare their findings to which was again the
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: problem that fire investigators were having. That the Nanty State
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: swooped in and helped. And this is how they helped.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and just to create an image in the viewers'
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: mind's eye. If you're picturing that thing as some humongous
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: thing where you set a couch on it, that's not
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the deal. It's very small actually, and it's it looks
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: like a little campstove sort of with all these things
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: looked to it. So you cut a piece of the
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: couch off, is what happened.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Actually, they have larger ones too that that you can
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: set essentially a house on fire underneath one.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Oh well, okay, but I'm talking about this the general
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: lab version.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: They have they have them bigger than a house.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, I saw that in some labs that they have
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: like house simulations in they like the roof will be
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: the colorimeter. Okay, So it's it's like all sorts of
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: different sizes. We're both right, I think. Is the happy
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: outcome of it, okay, And there's also another experiment that
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: or another finding that these experiments yielded, which is flash over.
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  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I thought, I mean I could have sworn.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: In the movie Backdraft, they called that backdraft. Maybe that's
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: a similar term, or maybe it's the same thing, and
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: maybe it was a oh it is, okay, it's.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: A backdraft seems to be a component of a flashover.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, Well, I guess that makes sense. So a
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: flashover is when you've got a fire going in a house.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: You've got a big layer of smoke that's got all
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: kinds of like combustible gases, all sorts of little particles
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: that are super flammable of in that smoke. It's at
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: the ceiling collecting and collecting and then just getting more
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: dense and going down, down down, as a room heats up,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: and then as it hits a certain point basically a
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: high enough temperature to ignite it, there is like an explosion.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Basically it can hit one thousand degrees and when that
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: flashover happens, you can see char marks and burn marks
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: that previously people were like, the only way to get
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: that is if you like dump gas all over the room.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Right, and that's a thousand degrees celsius, like eighteen hundred
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: degrees farenheit. Right, that is really hot, and it happens
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: there's a really steep incline where that temperature just increases
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: like that and everything stuff just spontaneously catches fire because
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: it's so hot, it's reached the ignition point for that
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: couch or that TV or whatever. The whole room catches fire,
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: and like you said, it does all sorts of It
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: leaves all sorts of telltale marks that had long been
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: attributed to arson. For example, the idea that the floors
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: chart or another one is kind of related to the
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: idea that if the floor's charred in accelerant was used,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: if the underneath or if the bottom of a couch,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: what's that called the underside of a couch, the undercarriage
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: of the couch, that's where the socks are, the fanny
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: of the couch.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: If that's burn it's true.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: If that's burned, then then they were like, well an
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: accelerant was used, it's spilled over under the couch and
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: caught the couch on fire. No, when the whole room
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: becomes what's called fully involved, the whole room's on fire,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: the bottom of the couch can very easily get get burnt.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Same with the underside of the bed and any furniture
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: and the floor. So that's that was a big finding too.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: And then the other thing about the flashover is it
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: can it can basically stop and stay in suspended animation
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: until oxygen comes in and it catches fire again. But
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: wherever that oxygen's coming from, the fire follows in like
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: a line, and it can go around the corner, up
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: the stairs, through a bedroom door, and out a bathroom window.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: If that's where the oxygen's coming from the fire will follow.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: It is what's what a backdraft is in my understanding.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, I think that's that. I haven't seen that movie
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: in a while, but that sounds about right. Okay, even
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: though it was a movie fed version, you know, right,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I think the science in it was supposed to be
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: pretty good.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Oh was it?
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean it was Ron Howard, you know.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: So what was the I mean, this is like the
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: early nineties, wasn't it.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah, it seems about right.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: I mean this would have been so one thing that
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: you'll find when you start looking into fire investigation is,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: you know, Paul Kirk wrote that book in nineteen sixty nine,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: and over time, like more and more scientists got involved
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: in fire investigation, but it's still like percolating throughout the field.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Like so in the early nineties, it was still a
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: lot of pocum involved. And I'm sure Backdraft repeated a
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: lot of that too.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that the whole character was sort of, you know,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: that mystical guy who understood fire, you know, more than anyone. Yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Another big thing happened in the early nineties besides the
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: movie Backdraft in nineteen ninety one was the Oakland black Hole,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: a big fire in Oakland, California, that destroyed about close
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: to three thousand homes. But it was a really good
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: chance to go in there as a fire investigator and
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: kind of see what happened. They looked at fifty different
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: houses and they found, you know, sort of the normal
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: things that you might find when you're thinking arson. But
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: one of the big things they found was that crazing
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: on the glass. They did some experimentation with that glass
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: and they found they basically said that this whole notion
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: that crazing is because of arson isn't true at all.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: It's when they spray the windows with that water and
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: it's at a really high heat that it cools super fast.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: That's where you're going to get it. And this is
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: one of those that seemed really like they should have
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: known this earlier, just because people have been blowing glass
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: and working with glass for so long. I'm surprised someone
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: didn't know that before that.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: They know that was a finding from the Oakland black Hole.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they like, it wasn't one glass maker that was like, oh,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: by the way, if you get it wet, that happens.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: These these like this industry or field doesn't even listen
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: to Supreme Court or other court rulings. They're not going
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: to listen to some glass blower.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true. Those are as hippie tippy as it comes.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: The other thing about that Oakland black Hole opportunity, because
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: you like, they knew what caused the fire. They knew
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: for a fact it wasn't arson in these houses. They
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: were originally planning on examining a hundred houses, but the
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: features and characteristics that they found were so uniform that
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: they stopped at fifty. The group agreed, like, we're not
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: going to learn anything from another fifty of them. We
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: totally got this like it's that repeatable, like like this
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: is what happens when a flashover occurs. All these telltale
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: signs of arson are totally made up. Yeah, I say,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: we take a break, Chuck, and we'll come back and
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: we'll talk a little more about arson investigation. So there
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: were a couple more like huge landmarks I guess in
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: the late eighties or mid eighties, early nineties as far
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: that really pushed arson and fire investigation forward. One was
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: a terrible hotel fire from New Year's Eve nineteen eighty
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: six in I think San Juan, Puerto Rico at the
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: DuPont Plaza Hotel, which I think was a Sheridan at
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: the time. The hotel was in a dispute with its
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: workers over union contract, and some disgruntled workers set a
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: bunch of furniture on fire in one of the ballrooms
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: and ended up killing like ninety eight people. The fire
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: spread really quick. The reason why this is such a
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: landmark is because some people armed with all this data
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: that things like the calorimeter had produced, came in and
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: added creating computer models, and essentially what they found was
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: their computer could show that this fire happened exactly as
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: the witnesses said it did and ultimately led back to
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: the origin, which was those three disgruntled dudes in the
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: ballroom setting the furniture on fire.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So the problem though, as you mentioned, is that
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: you're not going to get these two scientists from the
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Center for Fire Research on every case of every burnt
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: house in the United States. So it's you know, that
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: was one of the biggest problems. I guess. One big
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: milestone was the Lime Street fire in nineteen ninety. This
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: is another case where it's really sad. There was a
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: guy named Jerald Lewis and Jacksonville, Florida. He was charged
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: with arson and murder for setting his house on fire,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: killing his wife, her pregnant sister, and four kids and
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: got out with his son. No one else was able
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: to get out, and he said, hey, my son started
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: this fire. He's playing with matches on the couch in
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: the living room and arson investigators came in and said,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: you know, in the traditional way, and we're like, no,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: there's no way there was an accelerant here. There's that
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: puddle char on the floor. That v pattern that we
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: talked about, which should you know, literally point to the
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: source of the fire is not pointing at that couch,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: and this is a big case. Prosecutors called on called
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: in a guy named John Linidi from Georgia. He was
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: a fire investigator and John Dehan, who wrote or co
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: wrote at least a manual on fire investigation, to basically
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: come in and say, hey, can you come in here
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: and confirm that this guy's lying so we can put
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: him away. And Lintidi walked away from that investigation and said, well,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: at first he looks like he's guilty to me, so
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I can confirm that you should go ahead and prosecute.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: But then they got a chance, and it seems like
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: these opportunities are a real big thing in fire, where like, hey,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: we actually have a little bit of money to run
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: an experiment here. And that is when they recreated this
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: house right down to the kind of couch it was
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and everything that was in the house basically and set
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: that couch on fire to see if it would burn
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: like that, and it did.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the prosecution spent twenty thousand dollars to recreate that
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: fire in a house like two or one or two
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: houses down that was exactly identical in structure to the
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: one that Gerald Lewis had been accused of burning down
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: and I mean they went all out to recreate it,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: so much so that they brought some family members in
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: and said, does this look like what the house looked
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: like in the night of the fire, And they said, yes,
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: this is it. Like it's like, I'm it's eerie. So
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: they started by setting the couch on fire, like basically
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: trying out Lewis's account of events, and everybody involved in
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: this experiment just expected the fire to kind of like
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: maybe start to slowly catch and then sputter and go out,
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: like the sofa was not just going to catch. So
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: they were all really surprised when the fire caught and
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: then caught the other cushion on fire, and then all
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: of a sudden caught the like a big portion of
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: the room on fire. That was the first thing. And
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: then after the fire really burned and they evaluated everything,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: they were like, all of these things that are supposedly
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: arson related, they're here, like this is this the couch setting.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: The couch being set on fire produced all of those
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: things that as being used as evidence against this guy.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is this was a huge chaine for
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Lin Tidi personally as an investigator. He was basically like
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: he said, I had an epiphany, you know, almost in
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: a guy to die based on these theories that were
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: a load of crap, was his quote. So that not
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: only sort of changed his way of thinking, it started
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: a change in the industry. But like you mentioned earlier,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: one of the problems is is that getting that stuff
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: to trickle down to the local, you know, level, is
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: really really hard, especially in a profession where they seemed
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: really really kind of stuck in these old methods of
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the like i'll just call it the de Niro.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Way, that's a great, great name, and it.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Was really hard to get that information. Even if they
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: got the information, a lot of them were still like, now,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not a science. It is a lot
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: of intuition, so much so that in nineteen ninety seven
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: the International Association of Arts Investigators argued against the Supreme Court.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: There was something called the Dalbert Standard, which basically said
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three that like, hey, the scientific method
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: has to be used if you're an expert testifying at
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: a trial. And they said, no, no, no, that's great,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: but not for us, because this isn't a science and
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: we should be exempted from that.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was nineteen ninety seven. Paul Kirk wrote the
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: book in nineteen sixty nine. Everybody remember, and so you'd think, okay,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: surely shortly after that the industry would have come around,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: and that's absolutely not true. In twenty eleven, the National
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Fire Protection Association, which now puts out what's considered like
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: the gold standard manual on arson or fire investigation. Yeah,
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: back in twenty eleven, their manual said that if you
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: used the process of elimination and couldn't determine what started
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: a fire, you should probably go ahead and assume it
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: was arson. So if you didn't know what the cause was,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: go ahead into court and testify that it was probably arson,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: and that guy should get the death penalty for murder
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: because of the people who died in the house. Yeah,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: twenty eleven, Chuck.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably a good time to talk about that case.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: You mentioned, the Cameron Willingham case. This is this is
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one. It was in December of ninety
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: one in the Corsicana, Texas. Cameron Willingham and Stacey Willingham
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: lived in this house burned down, killed their three children.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Stacy was gone at the time. It was you know,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: just before Christmas, so getting Christmas presents for her kids.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Cameron said that, you know, there was so much heat
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: in smoke that he tried to get his kids but
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: couldn't had to get out of the house and call
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: for help. Was you know, what he thought was the
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: best method. And this was one of those case where
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the local fire assistant fire chief I guess Douglas Fogg,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: and a guy Nammanuel Vasquez, who had a lot of experiences,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: an investigator came in and identified these charring spots, what
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: they call poor patterns, like you poured gasoline or something.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: The the patterns that they saw, which is where the
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: fires are supposedly started, they found in the hallway where
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: the kid's bedroom wasn't at the front door, like this
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: was clearly someone trying to trap people inside. And this
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: guy did it.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that essentially he started by pouring accelerant and the
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: kid's bedroom, walked backwards out of the hall while still
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: pouring accelerant, and then all the way to the front
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: door and then let a match. And this Vasquez guy,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: if he wasn't, if he wasn't one of the people
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: that de Niro hung out with, I will be really
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: surprised because from what you are describing him, from what
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: I've read, he's exactly that kind of guy.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: His work, I mean, it was not ninety one. He
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: probably was.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: His work was later criticized, like when we said that
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: it's been described as mysticism. They were talking about this
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: guy's report on the Willingham case. And he had tons
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: of experience, so he was very ry, widely respected in
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: the field of fire investigation, something like twelve hundred or
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: fourteen hundred fires under his belt as an investigator. The
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: thing that sends a red flag up about him is
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: he said most of them were arson. There's nowhere on
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: the planet where some high percentage of fires like that
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: is actually arson. Maybe Detroit in the nineties, maybe Detroit,
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: but certainly not just in Texas in general, right where
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: this guy was working. So he was apparently one of
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: those people. He died in nineteen ninety four, but he
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: was apparently one of those investigators who started backwards from
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: this was arson or I see that telltale sign of arson.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: So now I have to figure out what else supports
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: that theory, And he did, and his report was very damning.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: It was very convincing, and it helped put Cameron Willingham away.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: There were some other things that the prosecution used about
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Cameron Willingham, that is super early nineties, late eighties Texas.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: He had an Iron Maiden poster in the utility room
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: that can I play with madness poster you know where
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: like somebody's punching through Eddie's head.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know the post.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: That's true, looking up, it's.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: A work of art. Okay.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: He had the fact that he had an iron Man
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: poster up meant that he was interested in death and
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: probably involved in Satanism, Like he had a tattoo with
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: a skull with a snake around it. So obviously he
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: was a killer of children and their whole their whole premise,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: their whole theory was that he had killed murdered his
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: two one year old daughters and one two year old
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: daughter by fire because they were getting in the way
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: of his lifestyle of like hanging out and drinking and
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: going out. And he was prosecuted and ended up in
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: two thousand and four receiving the death penalty, And most
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: people who are familiar with the case point to it
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: and say, this is a clear example of an innocent
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: person being executed.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: That's right. In two thousand and four is many years later. Obviously,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: he was scheduled for execution, and a guy named Gerald Hurst,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: who was an investigator who had gotten some previous charges
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: dropped against someone else in a similar case. Some people
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: got together who were, you know, supporting Willingham and said, hey,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: you know you're you're the best at getting someone off.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: You don't think he did this? Can you help? He
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: went in and said, well, first of all, the report
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: from Vasquez, the first line says, in order to kill fire,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: you have to love it a little bit. And that's
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: just that's just weird. It's a red flag. No. He
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: looked in and saw a lot of issues with their work.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: First of all, the assumption that only and this is
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: one of the big ones, like only an accelerant could
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: have caused a fire this hot. That's one that you
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: see or used to see at least a lot in
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: arson investigations, like it had to be gasoline or something
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: because it was so hot. The craze glass again, that's
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: another one. We've already been over that. And then he
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: started just looking at the account. The more he looked
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: at it, he was like, you know what this seems
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: like it really or the evidence. He said, the more
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: I look at this, this looks like it really matches
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: up with his account of what happened. The other thing
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: we didn't mention too is that they found mineral spirits
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: at the house and when Hirst looked into it, he
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: was like, this mineral spirit they found was on the
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: front porch by the by the grill, and that's what
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: he used it for, right, So like that's not a
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: piece of evidence.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: No, So this guy, this investigator, gerald Hurst, just completely
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: demolished the evidence that was used to convict and eventually
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: execute Cameron Willingham. But the Board of Parole and Pardons
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: is like they got the report and they apparently didn't
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: open it and voted to uphold the conviction and execution
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: and so like this is a this is I think
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: when the Innocence Project was just starting. I don't even
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: know if they'd come around by this time. The problem
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: the problem with Arson cases because other people have gotten
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: off thanks to people like gerald Hurst who've come back
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: and been like hey, hey, hey, like criminal courts aren't
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: super savvy, and you're still listening to Arson investigators who
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: don't who are using folklore on the stand to convict people.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Here's an actual scientific analysis of what the evidence shows,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: like it can get people off, but it's so not
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: a smoking gun like DNA evidence is. Instead, it's there's
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: a different interpretation, and it's quite possible it wasn't arson.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: And is that enough to reverse a conviction and set
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: somebody free from prison. Not necessarily, So it's still kind
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: of like a there's still plenty of people probably who
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: were convicted of arson on junk science that are still
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: in prison. I guess what I'm trying to say.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: All right, should we we need to take another break, right,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: I think so, all right, let's take another break. We'll
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: talk about where we are today with Urson investigation. Like
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: truly things have changed.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Right, surely?
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: All right, So you know, if you follow the news there,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: you can you can see a lot of I guess
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: ground being gained as far as overturning convictions on arson.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: But it's a tough one, like you were talking about
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: before their break, it's you know, it's hard to get overturned.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: A lot of the evidence has just gone obviously because
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: it was a fire, or maybe the investigation to begin with,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: was it done well and stuff wasn't saved. So it's
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: just it's a hard thing to get overturned, even with
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: the new science that we have these days. It's not
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: like a lot of other cases. There's the NFPA nine
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Colon Guide for Fire and Explosive Investigation, which this was
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: published in nineteen ninety two to begin with, and this
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: is the gold standard you're talking about.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's the gold standard now. It's also i
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: think the same manual that said just assume it's arson
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: if you can't figure out what started it.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Well, they've been updating it obviously every year, which is
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: what they do with guides like this. They just i
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: guess ripped a lot of pages out and this is
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: sort of it's a book, though that's not as much.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: It's aimed more toward like surance companies and law firms
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: because a lot of this stuff is like a lot
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: of times when you see something really investigated or reversed,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: it's because of a big civil case against like a
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: drapery manufacturer or something that's getting sued because their their
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: curtains went up, you know, too fast or something, and
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: so they had the kind of money to pour into
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: a defense that wouldn't happen in a criminal trial.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so over time, civil courts have become way more
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: savvy as far as fire investigation goes as on the whole,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: compared to criminal courts. In criminal courts, it's still very
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: possible that kind of pretty poor evidence can be admitted
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: and used against somebody. And that's not just the courts
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: who are at fault, like it's the investigators themselves who
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: are at this point resistant to change. If you're not
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: getting on board with the idea that science is showing, like, yes,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff that's wrong with traditional arson
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: investigation or fire investigation. You're just you're you're you're resisting now.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: There's just it's been disseminated too widely for too long.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: And I mean, I guess I can understand where that
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: resistance comes from. Because all this what your training was
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: handed down from people who had decades of experience and
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: knew what they were talking about, and you venerated them
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: because they were an old veteran of the fire department
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: or something like that. Your beliefs are now being challenged
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: or intuition is being derided as superstition in folklore, and
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: you're probably being treated like a bumpkin. And then you
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: also probably believe that these eggheads are freeing convicted arsonists
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: from prison or trying to at least, So what the
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: hell's going on the world is topsy turvy upside down?
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: I don't like, I'm not DeNiro, I've hung out with
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: any arson investigators, but I would suspect based on everything
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: I've read, that that would account for any resistance or
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: pockets of resistance that are still left.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say so probably, And you know what,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: it's probably one of the things that as people age
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: out and retire, the new generation, a better understanding will
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: probably you know, probably be the one in the forefront,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: I would hope. So we'll talk a little bit about
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: how you can actually find the origin point of a
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: fire in a more scientific way. It's a tough thing,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: obviously to find where a fire started once a fire
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: has like fully burned down a house. There have been studies,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: even though it was one cited by Beattie and Oliva Oliva, Oliva,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: Sure you don't need that if a fire started to
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: burn for just three minutes after the flashover happened, that
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: investigators basically couldn't tell what quadrant of a room, not
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: even like the very spot, but even what quadrant that
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: the fire originated in any better than chance, right three
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: minutes after the flashover. Yeah, but so all this to say,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: it's really really hard to do, oh.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: For sure, because the flashover again, it's full involvement the
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: entire rooms on fire. They did say that within if
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: the fires put out within thirty seconds of flashover, they're
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: right about eighty four percent of the time.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Big difference.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: That is a big difference. But they have found that
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: there are some reliable ways of tracing the origin of
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: fires or seeing the source of fires. Right, So if
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: the V shape I don't think we ever said that
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: V shaped char that used to be considered to literally
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: point to the source of the fire, those form were opposite.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Where an oxygen source enters in a a flashover room
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: or room that's in flashover, it just forms that, right.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Or They also found that like puddling, those puddle marks
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: poor marks that clearly show accelerate those curtains on fire
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: from that drape manufacturer, when they fall and hit the
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: ground and burn, they can leave the same kind of marks. Right,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: So if you have all these confusing signs that just
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: don't make sense anymore, how do you find the source
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: of a fire? And as I was saying, they have
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: established there are some that are just genuinely tell tale
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: and they might not say this is arson, but they
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: can kind of lead you to where the origin of
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: a fire was and hopefully you can figure it out
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: from there.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. One way is to look at the
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: bodies of victims. It's obviously a very sad way to
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: investigate something, but you have to do it. And they
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: have found that people if you're really really close to
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: the fire, you know, I think most people think like, oh, no,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: you don't die from the fire, you die from a
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: carbon monoxide poisoning. That is true if you were further
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: away from the fire. If you were very close to
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: that fire, you usually die. You die from edema, in
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: which the airwaves of your body swell up from the
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: heat and your organs shut down from the heat, which
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: is I gotta imagine a terrible, terrible way to go, right.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: So, depending on the arrangement of the bodies throughout like
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: a house, you can kind of trace who was closer
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: to the origin of the fire, the source of the.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Fire, right or at least where it was, you know, hottest, right, okay,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: which isn't always where it started as we know.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Know that's true. There's another one called arcing that's pretty interesting.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: As a fire melts the insulation on wires in the house,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: like the electrical wire, the electricity can jump from one
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: exposed wire to another and it causes an arc the
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: and that's a you can tell that just by looking
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: at and two electrical wires where an arc happened. That
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: can only happen while the power's on, So you can
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: actually kind of say, okay, this arc happened at this
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: point in the fire because the power went out at
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: this point or we turned the power off at this point,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: so this arc couldn't have happened after that, which helps
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: walk you backward toward the origin point of the fire
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: or the direction of yeah, timing wise.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: They also have just a great database now. It's called
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: the Ignitable Liquid's Reference Collection Database or the il RCD.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Not bad, didn't spell anything, but that's fine thing. And
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: that's basically if you find just any flammable liquid at
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: the fire site, then you can descend it to the
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: lab and they can at least tell you what it is.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Right. There's also guidelines now for people who aren't fire
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: investigators but are likely going to be the first people
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: on the scene, like firefighters or ems, that kind of thing,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: And it's just stuff to be on the lookout for
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: so that you can you can tell fire investigators later
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: what you saw. Really? Yeah, what do they have? An
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: iron main poster? That's one You had to move a
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: refrigerator to open a door to vent the fire or
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: something like that. Was the refrigerator plugged in? Was the
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: appliance turned on this space heater that we think might
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: have been the cause? Was it in the honor off position?
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: When you show up to a scene, are you seeing
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: somebody who you've seen other scenes? And firefighters are like, yes,
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: I have the paramedic did it right? Like no, no, no,
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: like in the crowd, like not working the fire like
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: somebody who's in the crowd and they're like, oh, no,
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen Anyboddy.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good one. If there were any like
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: electrical line issue that you could see or whether or
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: like if you see you know, a big winds cause
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: a treat to fall nearby or something. Those are kind
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: of obvious things, but again these are for non investigators.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: What's another one another one keeping track of what people
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: who are witnesses or who were in the house or
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: the structure when it caught fire are saying and telling you, right,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: especially if they say something like the paramedic did it.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, I got. I got interviewed one time by
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: a fire investigator. What Yeah, I kind of forgot about this.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: My brother and I we used to love exploring sort
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: of abandoned homes and things. No, no, no, although I
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: did have a little fire thing for a little while.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people go through that phase.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Nothing big, just like you know, I'm going to set
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: this stick on fire in the woods. Very dangerous though,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: even though nothing happened by the get clear. Yeah, there
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: was a abandoned shed across the street from us. It
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: was a house that people moved out. New people moved
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: in and built a really big house, but left this
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: old shed and we had been in it exploring and
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: it was just just full of junk, and we as
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: a young child I was I was probably like ten
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: years old, was quizzed by the uh. I guess the
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: cops a couple of weeks later, my brother and I
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: because it turns out that the people said that there
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: were a lot of really expensive things in there, and
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: it was a big insurance playing and I think he
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: burned it down and said there was a bunch of
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: expensive stuff and he was I believe looking back, he
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: was thwarted by those darn kids.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: And no, we didn't take our dog in there, but
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: I remember just that was like, no, man, there was
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: a mannequin and a bunch of files and just some
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: frame pictures. It was junk. It was junk.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: You're like, I remember the mannequin Bekis Scott pretended to
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: kiss it. I think he actually did kiss it.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't remember. We never had to
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: like go into quart or anything. So I'll have to
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: ask my mom kind of what happened with that. But
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: just remember that.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what a great anecdote, dude, to end this with.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate that. So I made it all up.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: That's fine, we'll edit that out. I guess. I guess
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: the upshot of this is, if you know a fire
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: investigator and arson investigator, give him a hug and say,
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: let's stick to the science. If you want to know
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: more about that kind of thing, go out and research.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of really interesting stuff to read about
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: Arson investigation, and you could definitely do worse than reading
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: David Grand's Trial by Fire in the New Yorker and
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: Douglas Stars article in Discover magazine. Think a spark of science,
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: maybe something like that. Check it out. Oh that means
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: the time for listener mail. Sorry, I fell down on
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: my duties.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: That's right, brutalism follow up here. Hey guys. While listening
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: to that episode, I was delighted at the mention of
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Habitat sixty seven. As a McGill student, Habitat sixty seven
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: has been touched on in a number of my classes,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: especially because this architectural staple in Montreal was designed by
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: McGill alumni Mosha Safti. I wanted to share a fun
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: fact about the development of Habitat that I learned in
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: art history a few years ago. During the design process,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Safety use Lego blocks to help him model the building design.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: In fact, he used so many Lego blocks that he
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: bought out all of the legos at a number of
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Montreal toy stores. Pretty fun anyway, Thanks Roby, do you guys?
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know was always my first podcast recommendation
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: to others and has helped me become a more inquisitive
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: person over the last few years. So keep up the
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: good work. And that is from Kestrel Musculman.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Great name, great name for sure, Thanks for that story.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: We appreciate it. The great leg shortage of sixty something
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: in Montreal. If you want to get in touch with
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: us like Kestrel did man that is a great name,
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: you can email us. Send us an email to Stuff
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 46:19
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• 46:23
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