Fire Investigation Guidelines

Article taken from Issue 3 of the Forensic Access Newsletter "Benchmark"

Jim Munday, forensic scientist fire investigator, provides a case study

After a fire in a flat within a high-rise block was extinguished, the fire officer in charge carried out a standard FDR1 investigation. In his view, most of the damage had originated from a fire on a settee in the lounge, and a burning area on the bed in a bedroom must have been ignited separately. He felt that the fire had been started deliberately and passed his suspicions on to the police. They arrested the male flat occupant, who had been at the block’s ground-floor entrance when the fire brigade arrived.

The investigating fire officer took photographs, but there was no police examination nor was a forensic scientist consulted. The fire officer then wrote a statement to be adduced as expert evidence for the prosecution – virtually the entire evidence for the prosecution. The occupant was charged with arson and arson with intent to endanger life. His solicitor instructed Forensic Access to review the evidence and advise.

As the fire scene was no longer available for inspection, we had to examine the relevant documents. There were no contemporaneous notes to support the fire officer’s statement – written three weeks after the event.

The photographs indicated that the fire had spread from the lounge, via the open door and hallway, into the bedroom. High-level fire damage was visible around the door and along the hall to the bedroom doorway. This contradicted the officer’s statement that the fire could not have spread along the hall from the lounge. There were also burns in other parts of the bedroom, where burning fragments had dropped from above. This could easily explain the burns on the bed.

It remained to explain how the settee had ignited. The occupant smoked, but the time between his last using the room and the fire’s discovery was too short for a lit cigarette to have been the cause. However, candles had been lit at the time, including one immediately adjacent to the settee.

The FDR1 gave the cause as ‘90% deliberate, 10% unknown’. If the reasoning concerning two areas of origin was correct, the cause was 100% unknown! When questioned, the officer admitted that he knew of the candle and ‘could not rule it out’ as the ignition source for the settee.

We took the view that there was only one area of origin, that it was impossible to establish firmly that the fire was deliberate, and that there was a reasonable accidental explanation. We also raised the question of the fire officer’s training, qualifications and experience as a fire investigator.

From the building construction and the fire separation of the purpose-built flats, it was clear that the only life endangered was that of the occupant. We felt that this part of the indictment was open to challenge even if the fire could be shown to be deliberate.

Following our report, the fire officer made a statement clarifying his expertise, reiterating his views on the potential for fire spread (in the face of the photographic evidence to the contrary) and attempting to support the arbitrary percentage figures in the FDR1 by reference to Home Office statistical requirements.

We were called to attend Crown Court but, before the prosecution offered any evidence, a voir dire took place to determine the admissibility of the fire officer as an expert witness. The court determined that he would be permitted to give evidence of opinion but ordered that he meet first with our expert to try to reach agreement. The Crown eventually dropped all charges against the defendant.

Had the fire officer’s statement been accepted at face value and a suitable expert not been instructed by the defence solicitor, there is little doubt that the defendant would have been found guilty and imprisoned.