RSS Feed
Print Story
E-mail Story
Officers learn to read the ashes
Course teaches how to find a fire's cause
| Saturday, Feb 10 2007 9:45 PM
Last Updated: Saturday, Feb 10 2007 9:51 PM
ALPAUGH -- Steven Watkins was on his knees, hunched over a swath of charred grass, scouring the ground for evidence.
BAKERSFIELD.COM HOT TOPICS:
Loading Stories
Advertisement
Photos:
A team of firefighters watches as instructor Mike Heath places flags to mark evidence in a burned-out plot of grass Tuesday.
The engine captain for the Bureau of Land Management, bald and built like a linebacker, was hunting for a needle in a haystack. As part of a training course in wildland fire investigations, Watkins was trying to determine the cause of a recent fire.
"They call it reading the ashes," said Forest Service Special Agent Marion Matthews, one of the course instructors.
Matthews and other instructors from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia had deliberately set several fires in an empty field just outside Alpaugh several days before in preparation for the exercise. About 20 rangers, firefighters and law enforcement officers from California, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado were broken into three teams. It was their job to to figure out how the fires were set.
The task was not easy.
The work was similar to what you might see on television shows like "CSI: Miami." But instead of dead bodies on a city street, "the vic" was a large tract of forest in a remote mountain area. There wasn't a weapon to dust for fingerprints and there was no body to inspect.
Instead, fire investigators searched for burn marks on weeds, trees and rocks, the so-called "footprints" the fire leaves on the vegetation. They followed this path backward to the fire's origin. Then they hit their knees, like Watkins, and looked for the cause.
"Usually everything in the burned area is black so whatever might be in there is dark or buried from wind and debris," said Debbie Santiago, a trainee who works as a fire mitigation and education specialist for the BLM in Bakersfield.
To find the cause, investigators used a variety of tools, from the naked eye to a magnet the size of a brick that might pull up a tiny piece of burned metal that would otherwise blend in with the surroundings.
Before long, Watkins and his crew found a thin metal rod in the area where their fire started. To anyone else, it looked like a piece from a broken wire hanger. To the trained eye, however, it was evident this came from fireworks.
Everything started to fall into place.
A wrapper to a pack of sparklers was found earlier on the perimeter of the fire. And another investigator reported that he observed sparklers in a truck belonging to a man he interviewed who had been seen near the fire when it started.
But the work was far from over.
Arson cases are notoriously difficult to prove in court and investigators must follow certain procedures and be meticulous about every detail along the way.
"What's done here is the most vital component of an investigation," said Mike Heath, a senior instructor who previously worked investigating fire in South Carolina. "If it's not done right and thorough, it makes or breaks the case."
So far, the teams have spent hours getting to this point, on a practice fire that burned less than one-tenth of an acre.
Now, they have to bag evidence, take dozens of photos, measure the distances to key points in the area, talk to witnesses and conduct background searches on their suspect. They also have to create a diagram of the fire's path in case the scene needs to be recreated before a jury in court.
Since arson is as much about proving what caused a fire as what didn't cause the fire, they also have to rule out all other causes, including lightning, vehicle exhaust, or a surge in a nearby utility wire.
"A lot of investigators say this is more difficult than a murder investigation because there's less evidence and it's difficult to read a fire," Matthews said. "So, it takes a lot of practice."