Reference
NFPA 921 and You - Your Guide to Success
By Mark Hughes, P. Eng.
© 2003 Sintra Engineering Inc.
Anyone who has performed any fire investigations is probably somewhat familiar with the National Fire Protection Association's (NFPA) "Guidelines for Fire and Explosion Investigations" also known as NFPA 921. This document forms a benchmark for fire investigations, primarily because there is no other real standard for fire investigations. NFPA 921 is often referenced in litigation by lawyers who are trying to either qualify or challenge the credentials of expert witnesses being called upon for their opinions. As a consequence it is important that anyone investigating a fire be very familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the document. To help, I thought I would give some background to NFPA 921.
The National Fire Protection Association was established in 1896 and is an international nonprofit organization comprised of more than 75,000 members from 80 nations. There are over 300 NFPA fire codes and standards that are used as benchmarks throughout the world and affect most buildings, processes, services, designs and installations. The NFPA is organized in a committee structure for the development of new standards, and as a consequence, the process for change can sometimes be slow. As part of the development of their standards they have a regular review cycle to ensure the continued relevance and accuracy of all their standards, codes and guidelines.
NFPA 921 was developed to assist in improving the quality of information preserved from a fire scene and process of investigating fires. The guide (not a standard) is intended for both public sector investigators (with statutory responsibilities) and private sector investigators preparing reports for litigation purposes.
The first edition of NFPA 921 was issued in 1992 (not that long ago) and focused primarily on the determination of origin and cause of fires and explosions involving structures. Subsequent revisions of the guide have been expanded to including information on collection, handling of evidence, safety, motor vehicles fires, investigation management, incendiary fires, legal issues and appliance fires.
NFPA 921 does not encompass all of the parts of a complete investigation or any particular case. Time and resources also often limit the applicability of aspects of the guide for any particular investigation. Of more relevance is the general thrust of the document and the philosophy for improving the profession.
Where NFPA 921 can be dangerous to an investigator has to do with how the investigator approaches an investigation and then is called in to testify regarding his/her results. As with any document, unless you know it backwards and forwards, you must be careful in recognizing NFPA 921 as an authoritative standard. In Canadian courts (and American for that matter) when an investigator accepts a document as being authoritative, then if anything was done in the investigation that was different from the document's approach, then the expert can be challenged on the quality of their investigation. For example if NFPA 921 says you should always examine a building in a clockwise direction (it doesn't) and you prefer to do your examination in a counterclockwise direction (this shouldn't make a difference) then your testimony can be called into question if you say you always follow NFPA 921 but didn't in this case. While this sounds like a ridiculous example there are some parts of the document that are like this. Consequently it is important to recognize it as an extremely useful guide but not necessarily the end all and be all of fire investigations. To that end, the NFPA 921 provides a similar warning regarding its use.
I personally really like a lot of the content in NFPA 921, however there are some sections that I do not entirely agree with. As a consequence if I was asked if I agree with everything contained in NFPA 921 I would have to say "no". For example, NFPA talks about the scientific process and scientific methodology. However, if you try and find out what the scientific method is you will find a great deal of differing opinions on the subject from what you would think of as authoritative sources. In truth, there is almost no consensus as to what the scientific method really is other than a process that attempts to test hypotheses. This becomes problematic in fire investigations because you can almost never truly test your hypothesis (your theory of the fire) because you weren't there and there is almost always insufficient information to recreate all the pre-fire conditions exactly as they were before the fire. To truly test a hypothesis you would need to recreate the circumstances that led to the fire and try to get the fire to start again. As this is almost never done, one could argue that the scientific method cannot be directly applied to fire investigation. Fire investigation is inferential because we look at what's left and try to figure out what was there before. In that regard the systematic approach described in NFPA 921 is critical to ensuring investigators do a thorough job.
Fire investigation is difficult at the best of times and following NFPA
921 ensures that a good approach to the investigation should happen. However,
if you are ever called to testify on the results of your investigation be
careful about how much of NFPA 921 you agree to follow because it can potentially
be used to discredit you.
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