Reference
Vehicle Fires
Wasn't that a tea party (A brief history lesson in Boston)
By Mark Hughes, P. Eng.
© 1999 Sintra Engineering Inc.
Recently I had the opportunity to go to Boston for a seminar regarding the investigation of car fires that was put on by Lee S. Cole. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Lee Cole, he is probably the current preeminent authority on vehicle fires in North America.
The course was interesting, in that for me personally, it reinforced the manner in which I approached vehicle fires and the state of the art for investigating vehicle fires in general.
The course started out, as many of these types of courses do, with the introduction by each person attending the course stating their names, their employer and where they are from. When I mentioned I was from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Lee stated that Edmonton was where it all began. I thought he was joking, but the comment intrigued me. I thought perhaps he had some past dealings with our own Keith Fowler, who has traveled extensively in the US regarding vehicle fires, in particular those involving with the Ford ignition switch fires.
Later during the presentation, Lee described that many years ago when he was working for the NATB (National Auto Theft Bureau - equivalent of ICPB), the NATB investigators had been given a mandate to investigate vehicle fires for insurance companies. To determine if vehicles had been the victims of arson, a number of test burns were conducted (in the 50's) using accelerants. From these tests, several features were observed on the vehicles after the burns including sagging roofs and seat springs that had lost their temper. From these tests a manual for the investigation of vehicle fires was developed and used by NATB investigators. This manual became the primary resource for investigators in the determination of arson in vehicles.
In the late 1970's Saskatchewan General Insurance sponsored test burns of six vehicles under controlled circumstances. These burns were documented, filmed (in 16 mm) and the results published. The results of these tests disputed a number of key indicators listed in the NATB vehicle arson investigation manual and were considered heresy. The tests indicated that the standards used for years were wrong and that an accelerant based motor vehicle fire looked very similar to a fire as a result of an accidental cause. The results were not widely accepted and produced a great deal of controversy. As a result, the Alberta Chapter of IAAI (that's us by the way), conducted a further set of test burns in Edmonton, Alberta in 1982. These results definitively confirmed the pioneering work performed in Saskatchewan and revolutionized the way vehicle fires are investigated. These tests form the basis of how vehicle fires are investigated throughout the world.
The results of the tests proved that in general all vehicle fires, whether deliberately set, or accidental, burn identically with similar temperatures and resulting damage. The proper investigation of a vehicle fire entails the careful examination of the vehicle's damage and an evaluation as to which systems could have caused the fire.
Since that time, there have been many tests by numerous organizations regarding how vehicles burn in fires, but the revolutionary work done in Edmonton by our association put us on the fire investigation map. This work set the standard for work in the field of investigating vehicle fires.
As I looked at the credits on the video tape (hopefully we still have copies in our archives) of the burns done in 1982, I was disappointed to note that only a few were familiar and most had moved on to other endeavours. Having been involved in the recent "Back to the Basics" Course, I am convinced, that our pioneering predecessors in the FIAA have left a legacy in our organization regarding how we approach our training courses and furthering of techniques used in the investigation of fires.
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