{"id":1056,"date":"2015-04-02T11:39:48","date_gmt":"2015-04-02T18:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/?p=6603"},"modified":"2023-08-25T11:08:22","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T18:08:22","slug":"how-arson-investigation-has-changed","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/how-arson-investigation-has-changed\/","title":{"rendered":"How Arson Investigation Has Changed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Theo Love\u2019s film <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/little-hope-was-arson\/\"><i>Little Hope Was Arson<\/i><\/a> explores a linked series of suspicious fires set in East Texas in 2010. In the \u201cbuckle of the Bible Belt,\u201d ten churches burned to the ground in just over a month, igniting the largest criminal investigation in East Texas history. <em>The New York Times<\/em> wrote that the film shows\u00a0\u201cAmericana unvarnished and, because of that, as absorbing as it is respectful.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Because of the nature and size of the serial arson case in East Texas, the investigation\u00a0involved 15\u00a0agencies who deployed at least 100 investigators to relatively quickly hone in on the suspects. As you&#8217;ll see in the film\u2019s depiction of the forensics of arson investigation, it is a crucial but inexact science that\u2019s been evolving and improving in recent years.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve compiled some of the more interesting writing\u00a0about how arson research and criminal investigation has\u00a0evolved, and still needs to evolve further. If you <em>really<\/em> want to be a fire investigation history nerd, you can read this lengthy but interesting paper, The Evolution of Fire Investigation, 1977-2011. Just as with other criminal investigation techniques, the methods are catching up with the science:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Up until recently, process of elimination \u2013 or negative corpus \u2013 passed as a reasonable way to prove an arson case. It was removed from the National Fire Protection Association&#8217;s fire investigation manual in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the past it was an accepted practice,&#8221; says Bob Duval, a senior fire investigator at the NFPA, the Massachusetts based trade organization that publishes the nation&#8217;s most widely accepted guide for investigating fires.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you didn&#8217;t have any viable source of ignition then it had to be arson.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Negative corpus, some argued, was part of the scientific method \u2013 a science-approved way of ruling arson without any specific evidence.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, when investigators couldn&#8217;t find an ignition source, some came to rely on evidence that indicated that a fire had burned especially hot or fast. Hot, fast or low burning fire indicators became telltale sign of arson, Duval says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A story on NPR, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/11\/19\/142546979\/arson-forensics-sets-old-fire-myths-ablaze\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Arson Forensics Sets Old Fire Myths Ablaze<\/a>,\u201d explores how a lot of what we thought we knew about arson was, frankly, wrong.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Fire investigator John Lentini] says that in the early days of arson forensics, the only science that happened was chemists looking for signs of gasoline on a piece of rug in the lab. In the field, investigators relied on anecdotal experience.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If somebody would see an artifact and then find gasoline, they would make a connection,&#8221; Lentini tells W<em>eekends on All Things Considered<\/em> guest host Laura Sullivan. &#8220;And the next time they would see that artifact, they would just assume that gasoline must have caused [the fire].&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The problem was that anecdotal experience could lead an investigator to the wrong conclusion. In recent years, fire researchers and the changes to fire investigations have shattered dozens of arson myths as the science behind arson forensics continues to evolve.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Faulty Investigations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are people still in prison who may have been wrongly convicted of arson, due to faulty investigation methods in that time.\u00a0The most widely-reported\u00a0recent example of this, to a very troubling degree, is that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas despite mounting evidence in his defense. An excellent piece about the case was published in <em>The New Yorker\u00a0<\/em>by David Grann. It\u2019s a truly fascinating study on how tricky and spotty arson forensics have been.<\/p>\n<p>Writing in <i>Discover<\/i> magazine, Douglas Starr looks at the history of modern fire research and then investigates fire researchers who are shattering arson myths, even though courts are continuing to convict people using faulty evidence.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The modern study of fire in America was born in the 1970s, when funding was plentiful and consumer protection politically popular. According to a 1973 Nixon administration report called <em>America Burning<\/em>, fires in the United States caused more than $11 billion in annual damage and took an estimated 12,000 lives. The numbers were later found to be exaggerated, but the report galvanized Congress to support the young field of fire research. As part of that support, Congress created a Center for Fire Research at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), which has since become the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. \u201cUntil then, there really was no fire safety science,\u201d says\u00a0Vytenis Babrauskas, who in 1976 became the first American to receive a Ph.D. in fire science, from the University of California, Berkeley. With the budget to hire more than 100 bright young engineers, including Babrauskas, NBS began with a fundamental question: How do you quantitatively measure a fire?<\/p>\n<p>Working at NBS in the early 1980s, Babrauskas invented a device that accomplished that purpose. The cone calorimeter resembled a vent hood with a series of ducts attached to the top of a small sealed chamber. When an object, such as a piece of plastic or wood, was burned in the chamber, the device measured a range of variables. It registered the chemical composition of the fumes, the accumulated energy released, and the rate of that release; the temperature, pressure, and opacity of escaping gases; the opacity of the smoke; even the weight of soot compared with the weight of the original substance. It measured so many characteristics that it became known as the Swiss Army Knife of fire research. The first calorimeter could handle small objects a few inches on each side. Later, Babrauskas designed a model big enough to test burning furniture, aptly called the Furniture Calorimeter. \u201cIt was basically a big hood with all sorts of instrumentation to capture and measure the gases,\u201d he says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Starr\u00a0goes on:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since then, other high-profile disasters attracted extensively trained scientists with their expensive technology, but the average fire did not. The typical local arson investigator, assigned from the police force or the fire department, had never taken college-level chemistry or physics. He learned on the job, by watching other arson investigators, many of whom had learned the trade from their superiors. The misguided notions that older arson investigators subscribed to seemed commonsensical, if you didn&#8217;t insist on seeing lab work to support them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The ATF, who figure prominently in the Little Hope case, have stepped up their game, too, when it comes to arson research, including a new tool that&#8217;s even less portable than the calorimeter. From that NPR story:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Some of the newest research on how fires start and burn is now coming from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The federal agency has always done a little fire research, but in 2003 it went all in with a new lab in Beltsville, Md., built just to burn things up.<\/p>\n<p>On a recent visit, researchers were setting a diesel oil fire in their Fire Research Laboratory. The lab&#8217;s chief, John Allen, says theirs is the largest forensic investigative tool in the world.<\/p>\n<p>The room is massive and open, akin to an airplane hangar. Overhead, a 40-foot by 40-foot exhaust unit, similar to the one over your stove, sucks out the smoke and heat from the fires set in the lab to measure carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, among other things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"res142549756\" class=\"bucketwrap image medium\">\n<div class=\"imagewrap\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"img aligncenter\" title=\"The large exhaust hood in the ceiling of the ATF's Fire Research Lab in Beltsville, Maryland is used to suck up smoke and heat from the fires set in the lab to measure carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, among other things.\" src=\"http:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2011\/11\/19\/hood-e5823d2e7e526a3ec7b35b7aa5bf5d82eb76f77a-s600-c85.jpg\" alt=\"The large exhaust hood in the ceiling of the ATF's Fire Research Lab in Beltsville, Maryland is used to suck up smoke and heat from the fires set in the lab to measure carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, among other things.\" width=\"560\" height=\"420\" \/><a class=\"enlargebtn\" title=\"Enlarge\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/11\/19\/142546979\/arson-forensics-sets-old-fire-myths-ablaze#\">i<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"credit-caption\">\n<div class=\"caption\">\n<blockquote><p>The large exhaust hood in the ceiling of the ATF&#8217;s Fire Research Lab in Beltsville, Maryland is used to suck up smoke and heat from the fires set in the lab to measure carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, among other things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p>The lab also houses a quarter-scale model of a living room complete with a couch, TV, chairs and a baby crib and toys. Allen says they use this to test fires, take measurements and time flashovers \u2013 how long it takes for flames to go from &#8220;a fire in a room to a room on fire.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In the field of arson forensics, things can get rather specific. There&#8217;s even debate over which kind of container (glass mason jar, paint can, or nylon evidence bag) works best when it comes to capturing fire scene debris.<\/p>\n<p>But as research\u00a0progresses, we can only hope and assume that arson investigation will become more of a, well, exact science.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, here\u2019s how Los Angeles firefighters were trained to investigate arson in the 1950s:<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=yv8kVdj_394<\/p>\n<p>You likely won&#8217;t make it through the whole thing, but it\u2019s an interesting glimpse into the past, even if they make the \u201carson department\u201d seem a little film noir-ish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For further reading as a companion to <i>Little Hope Was Arson<\/i>, we take a look at new trends in arson forensics. The science supporting investigation has improved, but sometimes the innocent are still being indicted.&#160;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1357],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1056","blog","type-blog","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-the-films"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How Arson Investigation Has Changed - Independent Lens<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Before the broadcast premiere of Little Hope Was Arson on PBS, we look at the ways arson forensics have changed over the years.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/how-arson-investigation-has-changed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Arson Investigation Has Changed - 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