How do firefighters figure out what the cause of a fire was?

Question

I assumed fire just absolutely destroyed everything to the same level.

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

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.