- Hello and welcome to another
episode of DeHaan on Fire
brought to you by
FireWise Learning Academy.
I'm your host Tim Davis.
DeHaan on Fire is a
podcast and YouTube channel
featuring education,
commentary, and conversation
with world renowned fire forensic
scientist Dr. John DeHaan.
If you have any question for Dr. DeHaan,
please email them to
questions@dehaanonfire.com.
The widely accepted method
of fire investigation
is the scientific method
of fire investigation
and this week I ask Dr.
DeHaan what that is.
DeHaan on Fire contains
discussion and video
not suitable for all audiences.
Viewer and listener discretion is advised.
Dr. DeHaan, what is meant
by the scientific method
of fire investigation?
- That's a kind of
complicated history there.
I just observed, can't say celebrated,
I just observed my 50th anniversary
as a forensic scientist, criminalist,
and even from the start I was involved
in fire investigation from
the scientific side of things,
the physical evidence and its
analysis and interpretation.
And so I was quickly involved
with scene investigations
and things like that, done
by a variety of agencies.
And the curious thing was, that
a lot of the investigations
were based on mythology and
what the previous person
in that job had taught
the new person coming in.
And sometimes that was
reliable, and often it wasn't.
And there was a lot of mythology that was
kinda handed down from
generation to generation
and when I first got
into it as a scientist,
I'd ask an investigator, why did you pick
that place as your point of origin?
And they'd come up with some reason.
And I'd go, well that's not the way
the physics of heat transfer
and things like that work.
What's going on?
And realized that a lot of
the investigative techniques,
or interpretation guidelines I should say,
really weren't based on
a scientific analysis
of the fire and heat transfer processes.
And so I did my best on a scene by scene,
report by report basis, to correct
the investigators that I worked with
and get them on the right path.
In 1980 I was invited to re-write
Paul Kirk's historic book
on fire investigation.
And Professor Kirk was a professor
of criminalistics and microchemistry
at the University of
California at Berkeley.
And he had a private practice
as a forensic scientist
and did a lot of fire and explosion stuff.
He was very well qualified
to write this book.
It was the first book actually written
by a scientist involving
fire investigation
and scene investigation and interpretation
and things like that.
But it was largely dismissed
by many of the people
in the fire investigation community
because it was written by a lab person
on the West coast and
so when his information
or interpretation went
contrary to what was
commonly involved they
just kind of wrote it off
and said, well that's just him.
Well when I took it over in 1980,
I re-wrote the entire book, but following
much more closely the scientific aspects
of proper investigation
and interpretation.
What was interesting was, that I realized
that if I emphasized the word science
or scientific method of investigation,
I would be canceling out the interest
of a lot of the people
involved in fire investigation.
So I deliberately chose the term,
the analytical method because every time
the subject of science
or scientists came up
people would envision people in lab coats
with clipboards and things like that.
And that's not the role I anticipated
for science especially, or
scientific contributions.
So I used the analytical
method all through
the first edition, first
couple of editions,
because I knew as soon as I mentioned
the dreaded s-word, science, people would,
readers would turn off and close the book.
So we pursued that and it was,
basically the scientific
method is applying
an analytical scheme
of both data collection
and data analysis and
conclusion formation.
Much like a scientist
would look at a problem
and say, gee I wonder if, or
I wonder how this happens,
and then do a series of experiments,
or collect additional data,
seeing if that hypothesis
was correct or not.
And ultimately publishing or presenting
the results of that inquiry.
Well fire investigation
is sort of like that,
that you have a problem that
you'd like to be able to solve
but it's on several different fronts.
Not only what caused the fire,
but when did it happen, how did it happen,
who else was present,
and things like that.
So there's a lot of other factors
that come into play and the investigator,
a good investigator, has to be sure
that they're collecting all
of the appropriate data,
not just walking through a scene
and taking some pictures and talking to
the first-in fire fighters
and that's the end
of the investigation.
No, that's a very
incomplete investigation.
- Thanks for watching another
episode of DeHaan on Fire
brought to you by
FireWise Learning Academy.
If you have any questions for Dr. DeHaan
please email them to
questions@dehaanonfire
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For now, signing off for
FireWise Learning Academy
and DeHaan on Fire, I'm
your host Tim Davis,
see you next time.
