Firefighters tackle vehicle arson course
The Darlington Fire Department were joined by SLED agents, firefighters fire marshals and investigators from our area for a three day
training by the Fire Science Training Institute.
Photos by Samantha Lyles
By Samantha Lyles, Staff Writer, slyles@newsandpress.net
How much time does it take for a car to burn to the ground? And how can investigators examine the charred remains of a vehicle and find the fire’s point of origin and – more importantly – determine if the fire was intentionally set? These questions were the focus of a three-day training exercise hosted last week at the Darlington Fire Department’s training center on Broad Street.
Agents from South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) joined firefighters, fire marshals and investigators from our area, and even some fire service professionals from as far away as Oklahoma and Canada for this course taught by Steve Riggs of the Indianapolis-based Public Agency Training Council.
One of the members of the Darlington Fire Department Explorers assists with the training.
Riggs, a national instructor and director of the Fire Science Training Institute, has been in the fire service for forty years, with twenty years of national instructor experience. Darlington Fire Chief Pat Cavanaugh says that having a teacher of Riggs’ reputation and experience instruct our local departments could yield great benefits in scene evaluation, arson investigation, and prosecution.
“We covered how to document arson fires, where to look when we come upon the vehicle to see if there’s any chance that it is arson, how to properly prepare yourself for a court case, and how to deal with insurance companies when the adjustor arrives,” says Cavanaugh.
Following a day of classroom instruction, second day training moved outdoors where four vehicles were set alight so students could observe how fire behaves inside a vehicle, how it shifts and consumes various components in diverse ways depending on where the fire began and whether it was assisted by incendiaries or accelerants.
“We’re looking for the different patterns, the different ways a fire can originate in different areas of the car and move to other areas, how to look at those patterns and read them to understand how that fire moves through the different compartments,” said Riggs.
For instance, Riggs noted that a fire will affect the windshield differently when it originates in the engine compartment, first melting out the bottom of the glass. Conversely, a fire that begins in the passenger compartment will burn out the top of the glass first and leave more glass at the bottom.
“It just helps them to recognize all the pattern’s they are seeing in a post-fire situation,” Riggs said.
The course also covered how vehicle fire progressions have changed as cars, trucks, and SUVs all shifted from heavier steel bodies to lighter materials.
“The patterns haven’t changed so much as the speed at which the fire burns with the newer, lighter components in new vehicles,” said Riggs. “A new car will burn to the ground in 15 or 16 minutes… and an older vehicle with heavier construction could take 20 to 25 minutes.”
Third day training was mostly hands-on, and the final exam had trainees pulling those burned vehicles apart and collecting observations and evidence to document each fire’s origination and cause. Cavanaugh notes that all of the students passed the exam and received vehicle arson training certification – which will add more points toward Darlington’s already stellar ISO rating of 3 (a metric of training and preparedness which helps lower local homeowner insurance premiums).
The four vehicle fires offered young firefighters in the DFD’s Explorer program a chance to gear up and extinguish the flames, getting valuable live fire experience. Hosting the training at DFD’s Broad Street facility also saved the department a significant amount of travel costs and class fees.
“This is one of those classes it’s hard to get in to. Since we hosted it, we got five free spots that normally would have cost us $275 per person, per class,” says Cavanaugh.
Chief Cavanaugh adds that DFD wants to host additional classes – like an incident command and structure fire course – and eventually expand its investigation capabilities by forming an arson team locally so that DFD and other county departments can handle arson cases instead of outsourcing them to SLED.