I assumed fire just absolutely destroyed everything to the same level.
In: Chemistry
Fires don’t destroy everything to the same level… areas that burn longer or burn hotter will look different from areas that caught fire later on. Smoke patterns will differ. Once they can determine where the fire started, they can do chemical analysis to determine if there were flammable materials that may have been cause or fueled it (looking at concentrations, locations, any identifiable container remains), or look for signs of electrical shorts, explosions, etc.
It depends on the fire – and that itself can be a clue.
Structures are built to be pretty fire resistant so most things don’t burn easily or evenly. There is a lot of construction data about burn rates and the temperature required to start and keep a fire going.
They take in all of that data and try and then backtrack to what makes sense. If the area around the dryer is burned the most… probably should investigate there first.
Something burning down completely is its own clue, if most structures are fire resistant, what could cause a big enough fire to burn the whole thing down?
They also usually come to a “likely” cause and are not 100% definitive unless they have a lot of info.
You’d be surprised. Even in a severely burned house, you can generally trace where the fire started by which areas are more darkly charred. It sort of radiates out from the point of origin because it burned there longer.
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