Chapter 10 - Fire scene reconstruction

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the reconstruction of fires in residences and small businesses. Fires can be intentionally set for their own purposes—to kill someone, to destroy property, or to gain a monetary or psychological end. It can also be set as part of another crime—to conceal or destroy evidence or as part of a ritual or fantasy. Fires can be the result of accidental, natural, or deliberate events. The objective of a fire scene reconstruction is to provide reliable and defensible answers to the factors that might have contributed to a crime. The reconstruction of fire scenes is considerably more difficult than the reconstruction of a typical homicide scene because of the changes and destruction wrought by the event being investigated. A forensic fire scene reconstruction proceeds in the following six general steps, which may overlap, and depending on scene circumstances, may not occur in the same sequence in every investigation: document the fire scene and its processing, establish the starting conditions, evaluate the heat transfer damage observed, conduct a fire engineering analysis, correlate human observations and factors, and formulate and test hypotheses about the fire.