How do firefighters (or investigators idk) find the cause of a fire? Isn’t that super hard if everything is just ash and dust?
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Fire/Life Safety Inspector here with a degree in fire science, years of my life given to reading NFPA, attending classes and fighting fires.
The simplest way to explain it is looking at factors of fuel sources, heat, chemical reactions (fuel interacting with fuel) and how much/ when oxygen comes into play. The fire tetrahedron, if you will. Time too plays a factor. Besides those you’re looking at construction type, human influence, the class of materials involved in the building/area. Though fire is a simple concept the thing that makes it ever changing is us. Having a prevailing consensus for how arson investigation is performed is short sighted and needs to be challenged consistently. If you’re ever interested NFPA provides a good starting point in the 921 standard.
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