How do firefighters (or investigators idk) find the cause of a fire? Isn’t that super hard if everything is just ash and dust?
In: 694
If it’s truly burned completely to ash you don’t have much to go on. But that’s not usually what happens…firefighters are relatively good at what they do, some stuff usually survives. There’s pretty good techniques, if there’s something left, that can tell you how hot it got, what direction the fire came from, possibly how it ignited.
So you generally start looking at wreckage and figure out what direction it was lit from, then work backwards from there until you find the “center” of the ignition. Then you use common sense. If the ignition point is a plug or junction box, likely electrical…maybe check the fuse/breaker on that circuit if it survived. If it’s a candle or remains of a cigarette filter or something like that…there you go. If it’s random, maybe do chemical analysis of the residue to see if you can find an accelerant or something similar.
Latest Answers