WEBVTT - The Dubious Science of Arson Investigation 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:09.280 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.600 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:15.840 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:20.400 should know. And before we start, Chuck, I want to 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:23.560 take a moment to take the opportunity to take the 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:26.640 chance over wishing you a happy birthday. 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:28.120 Oh, thank you. 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:31.720 I did March same day Caesar was stabbed. Can't get 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:32.160 over there. 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:37.080 Anyone, anyone famous gets stabbed on your birthday. I don't 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:37.400 think so. 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:38.600 No, definitely not. 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:43.760 All right, Well we'll have to change that by stabbing you. 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:47.320 That was sinister. I even wished you happy birthday and 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.239 look what I get? I get a stabbing throw. I 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:51.559 know what has become of us? 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:54.680 Chuck, thanks man, the Big five to three. Such a 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:55.520 notable birthday. 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:59.640 Yeah, I feel like, Also does it feel any different 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:03.360 than the No? I feel like. Also we need to 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:07.200 give a retroactive happy birthday to Jerry too from last month. 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:08.880 Yeah, that's true. 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:10.000 Happy birthday, Jerry. 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:12.759 You know I did the ultimate fifty three year old 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:16.480 guy thing for my birthday. I went to Athens, Georgia 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:20.600 for two Bob Dylan shows. Wow, that were exactly alike. 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:22.160 Were they really he played the same show. 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:25.920 Yeah, Bob Dylan does it say like, oh, let me 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:27.680 mix it up for if anyone wants to come the 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:28.200 second night. 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:31.040 Oh, I'm actually surprised. I could totally see him playing 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:33.520 different shows depending on his mood or whatever he felt 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:34.080 like that night. 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:36.160 No, well that, I mean there is something to that. 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.320 But he's eighty three, has got his set locked in right. 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:41.600 Really, he's thirty years older than. 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:44.280 You, I know, and he's still playing live music. 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:48.000 That's awesome. Could you understand a word? He said? Uh? 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:51.280 Yeah. It was very a vocal forward set actually, like 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.280 some real quiet music, and his voice was out front 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:57.880 in the mix. I've seen him dyling a lot. It's 0:01:57.880 --> 0:01:59.440 always you never know what you're gonna get, so it's 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:01.600 always That's part of the fun being a Dylan fan 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:05.040 is like, Ooh, I wonder what he's going to be 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:05.560 like this time. 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:07.480 Is he in a bad mood tonight? No? 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:10.400 He was great. He's old though, man, But yeah. 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:12.400 Eighty three is very old to beginning on stage and 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:13.840 playing how long of a set. 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:17.799 Like an hour and a half seventeen eighteen songs he played? 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:21.280 He plays piano full time now, which is sort of 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:25.079 the new change. Okay, but he stands. I've never seen 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:27.359 anyone do this. I've seen people stand at a keyboard, 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.040 but I've never seen anyone stand behind a grand piano 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:32.320 the entire time. 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:34.200 Basically, that is unusual. 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:36.760 He would sit a little bit, but he'd sit for 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:39.840 like six or seven seconds that he popped right back up. Wow, 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:41.760 that was really. 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:44.239 Interesting going on with him. That's very it's interesting. 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.119 Anyway, we're here to talk about Arson Investigation, and big 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:52.720 thanks to Livia for her help with this, because you know, 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:54.519 I was just kind of keen on, like, hey, Lvia 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:57.680 put together an article on like how that works and 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.280 how they figure out if someone burns something down, and 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:02.360 she came back pretty quickly and she's like, oh, chuck, 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:05.720 guess what it turns out? Like we can talk a 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:08.120 little bit about that. But the real story here is 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:13.400 the fact that Arson Investigation, for most of its time 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:19.119 as a thing, has been a lot of sort of witchcraftybs. Yeah, folklore, 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:20.120 And that's the real story. 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:25.440 Yeah, mysticism, made up intuition is probably about the kindest 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:28.360 way you can describe how it was for decades. 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:30.400 Like did you see backdraft? 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:33.880 No? I didn't Actually, isn't that like a Ron Howard. 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:37.320 Jam Yeah, back in the day. But de Niro plays 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:43.080 a Arson investigator who is very much fits and you 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:45.280 know he apparently hung out with like three or four 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:49.080 Arson investigators and kind of got his performance from them. Sure, 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:51.480 which makes total sense now that I've read this, because 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.920 there was a lot of like not mysticism, but really 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:59.360 like you know, smelling something and like sniffing something. He 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:01.360 chipped off of a wall, putting. 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:02.560 Your fingers on the railroad tracks. 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:07.000 Yeah, really corny lines. Like one of his corny lines is, 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:09.080 you know, the only way to kill it is to 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:14.760 love it a little bit. Man. So it's very much 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:16.840 in line with what we found out here, which was 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:21.800 that Arson investigation has long been just not scientific. 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.239 No, and there's like we're not just here to poke 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:28.919 fun at Arson investigators because they used unscientific methods. The 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:33.800 big problem with this is those unscientific intuitive methods have 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:38.320 been proven time and time again to be just utterly wrong, 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.800 but they're used still to this day in some jurisdictions 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:46.599 to put people away sometimes for like sometimes to death. 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:49.920 Some people have been put to death under the junk 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:54.040 science that arson investigation is and has been for decades 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.120 and has only recently started to really kind of come 0:04:57.120 --> 0:04:59.200 in line and become a scientific endeavor. 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:05.160 Yeah for sure, so big thanks, Olivia said to a 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:09.440 couple of gentlemen, Douglas Starr and David gran They wrote 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:13.960 some pretty great pieces, Douglas Starr for Discoverer and David 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:15.080 grand for The New Yorker. 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.200 Can I just say David Grant's New Yorker articles called 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:23.200 trow By Fire about Cameron Todd Willingham and his wrongful execution. 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:26.640 I think yeah, basically everybody should read that article at 0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:29.719 some point in decuren their life. It's just gut wrenching. 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:35.120 Yeah. Yeah, great, great investigation, great journalism. And so let's 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:37.120 get going here. I guess the first thing we should 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:41.159 say is that the first people to get involved in 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:44.760 arson investigation were not scientists, Like it was sort of 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:49.240 developed as a thing by firefighters, by cops, by law 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:55.080 enforcement generally, and not people who understood the scientific method. 0:05:55.680 --> 0:06:00.800 The first book about fire investigation was called Tiredstigations Very 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:04.400 Appropriate No Colin. It was published in nineteen forty five 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:10.360 by Harry retheret of the Fire Underwriter's Investigation Bureau of 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:14.360 Canada and it was very much written for an audience 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:17.360 of law enforcement to be like, all right, here's your 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:20.160 handbook if you want to prove arson. 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:23.040 Right. That's the big problem with it is in addition 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:26.160 to it basically being like old wives tales and folklore, 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:30.000 it came from the position like, if you're investigating this, 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:32.960 if you're using this book, you're trying to prove arson 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:35.560 not You're trying to figure out what started a fire, 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:38.240 and it may or may not have been arson. It's 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:40.760 here's what to look for for arson. And the problem 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:45.600 is is a lot of really common features that are 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:48.599 found after a fire we're attributed wrongly to arson. And 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.680 this is where it started to spread all the way 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:52.920 back in nineteen forty five. 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:56.120 You know what a better title would have been, What 0:06:56.120 --> 0:06:58.320 What to Expect when You're Expecting Arson? 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:02.799 Was an all time great chuck, Oh. 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:04.839 Thank you, I just thought of that. So that book 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:07.440 was sort of the standard until nineteen sixty nine. About 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:10.760 twenty five years later or so, I got any Paul 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:14.520 Kirk biochemists this time and forensic scientists at the University 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:19.440 of cal Berkeley, published a different book called Fire Investigation. 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:21.960 Well, it didn't have the s so it must have 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:22.720 been the prequel. 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:26.080 Yeah, this one should have been called Fire Investigation Colon. 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:28.480 You won't believe how much has changed. 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.240 So yeah, So Paul Kirk, being a scientist, he's like, no, 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.240 you really want to track down what started the fire 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:38.520 and then start making your assumptions after you've collected evidence 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:41.520 and analyzed it. Don't start from the premise that this 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:45.320 is arson and then look for signs that support your premise. 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:51.600 That's wrong. That's not how science works. The problem is is, 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:55.120 like Paul Kirk was like, use the scientific method, and 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:59.080 the fire investigators said to Paul, Paul, there's not a 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:04.120 lot of science for us to compare our findings against someone. 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.880 Help help nanny state, and the nanny States swooped in 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:09.880 and improved everything forever. 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:13.679 Yeah. About eight years later or so after that book, 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.840 in nineteen seventy seven, there was a government report that agreed, hey, 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.840 there's not a lot of stuff going on, and so 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:25.280 there were a couple of guides put out Arson and 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:29.440 Urs Investigation in seventy seven, which was based on surveys 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:33.479 from leading investigators, and then Fire in the Fire Investigation 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:36.240 Handbook from nineteen eighty and we should just kind of 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:39.720 read through like this quick list, because this was the 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:42.800 general thinking of like how you can tell if it's 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:45.800 arson if these things are there in the burned house. 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:51.480 I'll do the first one. Everyone knows this. The most 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:54.199 severely burned area of the house is where it started. 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:56.880 Yeah, it just makes sense since that had the opportunity 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:59.080 to burn the longest, so it burned the hardest. 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:01.560 Rights Totally, all these makes sense. 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:05.320 Also, heat rises, which means fire rises and smoke rises, 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:09.800 so the ceiling is always the most burned part of 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:15.200 any given room, which they call compartments in fire investigation lingo, 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:20.360 and that if you find burned floors, that automatically says 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:23.160 an accelerant was used, because you dump accelerate on the 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:25.920 floor and light it, and that's how the floor gets charred. 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:29.160 Telltale sign if you find a charred floor, an accelerant 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:29.600 was used. 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.440 Also, if you see a puddle shaped char on that floor, 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:38.960 that's another telltale sign for liquid because molke spreads out. 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.599 If you see a V shaped soot mark on the wall, 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.600 that is going to literally point to the origin of 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:47.080 the fire. 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.560 Right. And another one that kind of was an umbrella 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:55.720 category for some subcategories is that an accelerant fueled fire 0:09:56.000 --> 0:10:00.320 burns hotter than any other kind of fire. It also 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.439 burns faster as a result, So that means that all 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:08.440 sorts of weird stuff happens in a hotter, faster fire. 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.320 For example, something that they call crazed glass, which is 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.160 glass that has this weird webbing of cracks through it, 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:19.079 which they're like, is again an indicator of a very hot, 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.200 fast fire, which indicates an accelerant was used. So you 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:25.719 find glass with webs in it, that is a surefire 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:29.760 indicator that somebody started this fire using some sort of 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:31.280 accelerant or fuel. 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:35.559 Yeah, they said, that's us. It's craze, And they went, 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:38.800 don't you mean glaze. I said, now, let's just call 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:41.240 it craze since it's so close to another glass term. 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:43.640 Right, he goes, I hadn't thought about that. That makes 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:44.360 it even better. 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:49.640 So Nixon, believe it or not, kind of got things 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:53.360 going in nineteen seventy three when there was a report 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:55.960 from that administration that fires caused more than eleven billion 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.959 dollars in damage, killed twelve thousand people in nineteen seventy three. 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:02.560 A lot of this was found out to be exaggerated, 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:05.600 but it didn't matter because that kind of lit a 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:09.559 match no pen intended under the governments. But to get 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:13.120 to get into this, and they created the and funded 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:17.400 the Center for Fire Research, which is when they basically said, 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:20.280 all right, let's get one hundred engineers to really look 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:22.520 at this from an objective point of view and come 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:23.760 back to us with some good stuff. 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:25.680 Yeah. One of the early things that came out of 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.800 this that was really groundbreaking was called the Cone calorimeter, 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:32.840 and it was invented by a guy with the wonderful 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:36.360 name of y Tennis Bob Ruscus, who is a fire 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:40.120 safety expert to this day. And the Cone calorimeter is 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:43.280 essentially like a vent hood, a giant vent hood that 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:47.600 has a ton of sensors attached to it, and you 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:50.480 set something on fire, say like a specific kind of couch, 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:54.680 and it records all sorts of different things, the chemical 0:11:54.679 --> 0:12:01.000 composition of the gases that are released of the smoke, 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:04.200 how hot it burns, how long it burns. It even 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.120 has a scale so you can measure you can compare 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:08.880 the weight of the sook compared to the weight of 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.640 like what the what the furniture was like before it 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:15.000 caught fire, and you could take all this and put 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.360 it in a database. Like what you're doing now is 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:22.120 carrying out repeatable experiments to produce data that people can 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:27.080 use to compare their findings to which was again the 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:30.520 problem that fire investigators were having. That the Nanty State 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:32.600 swooped in and helped. And this is how they helped. 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:36.199 Yeah, and just to create an image in the viewers' 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.520 mind's eye. If you're picturing that thing as some humongous 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.360 thing where you set a couch on it, that's not 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:45.800 the deal. It's very small actually, and it's it looks 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:48.000 like a little campstove sort of with all these things 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:49.840 looked to it. So you cut a piece of the 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:50.840 couch off, is what happened. 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:53.880 Actually, they have larger ones too that that you can 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:56.640 set essentially a house on fire underneath one. 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.520 Oh well, okay, but I'm talking about this the general 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:01.080 lab version. 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:03.040 Okay, okay, okay. 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:04.640 They have they have them bigger than a house. 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:08.240 Yes, I saw that in some labs that they have 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:11.680 like house simulations in they like the roof will be 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:16.800 the colorimeter. Okay, So it's it's like all sorts of 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:19.120 different sizes. We're both right, I think. Is the happy 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:23.280 outcome of it, okay, And there's also another experiment that 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:26.920 or another finding that these experiments yielded, which is flash over. 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:31.160 Right, yeah, I thought, I mean I could have sworn. 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:33.720 In the movie Backdraft, they called that backdraft. Maybe that's 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:35.679 a similar term, or maybe it's the same thing, and 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:37.800 maybe it was a oh it is, okay, it's. 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:40.280 A backdraft seems to be a component of a flashover. 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.160 Oh okay, Well, I guess that makes sense. So a 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:47.760 flashover is when you've got a fire going in a house. 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:50.360 You've got a big layer of smoke that's got all 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:54.040 kinds of like combustible gases, all sorts of little particles 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:57.240 that are super flammable of in that smoke. It's at 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:00.760 the ceiling collecting and collecting and then just getting more 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.640 dense and going down, down down, as a room heats up, 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.120 and then as it hits a certain point basically a 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:11.400 high enough temperature to ignite it, there is like an explosion. 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.200 Basically it can hit one thousand degrees and when that 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:18.559 flashover happens, you can see char marks and burn marks 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:22.040 that previously people were like, the only way to get 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:24.200 that is if you like dump gas all over the room. 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:27.040 Right, and that's a thousand degrees celsius, like eighteen hundred 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:31.080 degrees farenheit. Right, that is really hot, and it happens 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:35.040 there's a really steep incline where that temperature just increases 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:39.240 like that and everything stuff just spontaneously catches fire because 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:42.240 it's so hot, it's reached the ignition point for that 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:45.560 couch or that TV or whatever. The whole room catches fire, 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:47.760 and like you said, it does all sorts of It 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:50.920 leaves all sorts of telltale marks that had long been 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:54.320 attributed to arson. For example, the idea that the floors 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.320 chart or another one is kind of related to the 0:14:57.360 --> 0:14:59.960 idea that if the floor's charred in accelerant was used, 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:04.760 if the underneath or if the bottom of a couch, 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:08.280 what's that called the underside of a couch, the undercarriage 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:10.920 of the couch, that's where the socks are, the fanny 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:11.520 of the couch. 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.040 If that's burn it's true. 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:18.640 If that's burned, then then they were like, well an 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:21.160 accelerant was used, it's spilled over under the couch and 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:23.840 caught the couch on fire. No, when the whole room 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:26.600 becomes what's called fully involved, the whole room's on fire, 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:29.440 the bottom of the couch can very easily get get burnt. 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:32.840 Same with the underside of the bed and any furniture 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:35.320 and the floor. So that's that was a big finding too. 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:38.960 And then the other thing about the flashover is it 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:43.040 can it can basically stop and stay in suspended animation 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:47.000 until oxygen comes in and it catches fire again. But 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:50.800 wherever that oxygen's coming from, the fire follows in like 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:53.280 a line, and it can go around the corner, up 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:56.320 the stairs, through a bedroom door, and out a bathroom window. 0:15:56.880 --> 0:15:59.400 If that's where the oxygen's coming from the fire will follow. 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:04.160 It is what's what a backdraft is in my understanding. 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:07.840 Okay, I think that's that. I haven't seen that movie 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:10.520 in a while, but that sounds about right. Okay, even 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:12.640 though it was a movie fed version, you know, right, 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:14.720 I think the science in it was supposed to be 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:15.280 pretty good. 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:16.880 Oh was it? 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:19.000 Yeah? I mean it was Ron Howard, you know. 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:20.920 So what was the I mean, this is like the 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:22.600 early nineties, wasn't it. 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:25.680 Uh? Yeah, it seems about right. 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:27.760 I mean this would have been so one thing that 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:32.800 you'll find when you start looking into fire investigation is, 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.160 you know, Paul Kirk wrote that book in nineteen sixty nine, 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:39.880 and over time, like more and more scientists got involved 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:46.400 in fire investigation, but it's still like percolating throughout the field. 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:49.960 Like so in the early nineties, it was still a 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:53.800 lot of pocum involved. And I'm sure Backdraft repeated a 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:54.680 lot of that too. 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:57.560 Oh yeah, that the whole character was sort of, you know, 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:02.080 that mystical guy who understood fire, you know, more than anyone. Yeah. 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:04.560 Another big thing happened in the early nineties besides the 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:08.600 movie Backdraft in nineteen ninety one was the Oakland black Hole, 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:12.720 a big fire in Oakland, California, that destroyed about close 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:14.919 to three thousand homes. But it was a really good 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:19.119 chance to go in there as a fire investigator and 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:22.520 kind of see what happened. They looked at fifty different 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:25.639 houses and they found, you know, sort of the normal 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:30.720 things that you might find when you're thinking arson. But 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:33.920 one of the big things they found was that crazing 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:37.280 on the glass. They did some experimentation with that glass 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:41.160 and they found they basically said that this whole notion 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:43.800 that crazing is because of arson isn't true at all. 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.919 It's when they spray the windows with that water and 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:50.639 it's at a really high heat that it cools super fast. 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:53.639 That's where you're going to get it. And this is 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:57.560 one of those that seemed really like they should have 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:02.520 known this earlier, just because people have been blowing glass 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:05.199 and working with glass for so long. I'm surprised someone 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:07.119 didn't know that before that. 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:10.160 They know that was a finding from the Oakland black Hole. 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:13.320 Yeah, they like, it wasn't one glass maker that was like, oh, 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:16.280 by the way, if you get it wet, that happens. 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.680 These these like this industry or field doesn't even listen 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.040 to Supreme Court or other court rulings. They're not going 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:23.440 to listen to some glass blower. 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:26.640 Yeah, it's true. Those are as hippie tippy as it comes. 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:31.280 The other thing about that Oakland black Hole opportunity, because 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:33.920 you like, they knew what caused the fire. They knew 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:36.680 for a fact it wasn't arson in these houses. They 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:41.359 were originally planning on examining a hundred houses, but the 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:45.040 features and characteristics that they found were so uniform that 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:47.520 they stopped at fifty. The group agreed, like, we're not 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:49.840 going to learn anything from another fifty of them. We 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:54.119 totally got this like it's that repeatable, like like this 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:57.560 is what happens when a flashover occurs. All these telltale 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:02.000 signs of arson are totally made up. Yeah, I say, 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:03.439 we take a break, Chuck, and we'll come back and 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:32.760 we'll talk a little more about arson investigation. So there 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:37.040 were a couple more like huge landmarks I guess in 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:40.000 the late eighties or mid eighties, early nineties as far 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:45.080 that really pushed arson and fire investigation forward. One was 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:48.640 a terrible hotel fire from New Year's Eve nineteen eighty 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.639 six in I think San Juan, Puerto Rico at the 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:54.679 DuPont Plaza Hotel, which I think was a Sheridan at 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:58.200 the time. The hotel was in a dispute with its 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:04.240 workers over union contract, and some disgruntled workers set a 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:06.440 bunch of furniture on fire in one of the ballrooms 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:09.000 and ended up killing like ninety eight people. The fire 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.600 spread really quick. The reason why this is such a 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:16.560 landmark is because some people armed with all this data 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:21.399 that things like the calorimeter had produced, came in and 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:25.399 added creating computer models, and essentially what they found was 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:29.120 their computer could show that this fire happened exactly as 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:32.840 the witnesses said it did and ultimately led back to 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:35.520 the origin, which was those three disgruntled dudes in the 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:37.200 ballroom setting the furniture on fire. 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:40.920 Yeah. So the problem though, as you mentioned, is that 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:45.199 you're not going to get these two scientists from the 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:49.000 Center for Fire Research on every case of every burnt 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:53.440 house in the United States. So it's you know, that 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:57.000 was one of the biggest problems. I guess. One big 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:01.080 milestone was the Lime Street fire in nineteen ninety. This 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:03.480 is another case where it's really sad. There was a 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:07.919 guy named Jerald Lewis and Jacksonville, Florida. He was charged 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:11.399 with arson and murder for setting his house on fire, 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:16.840 killing his wife, her pregnant sister, and four kids and 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:19.320 got out with his son. No one else was able 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:22.359 to get out, and he said, hey, my son started 0:21:22.359 --> 0:21:24.679 this fire. He's playing with matches on the couch in 0:21:24.680 --> 0:21:28.879 the living room and arson investigators came in and said, 0:21:28.920 --> 0:21:31.480 you know, in the traditional way, and we're like, no, 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:33.720 there's no way there was an accelerant here. There's that 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.320 puddle char on the floor. That v pattern that we 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:39.919 talked about, which should you know, literally point to the 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:42.600 source of the fire is not pointing at that couch, 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:47.040 and this is a big case. Prosecutors called on called 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:50.920 in a guy named John Linidi from Georgia. He was 0:21:50.960 --> 0:21:55.399 a fire investigator and John Dehan, who wrote or co 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:58.560 wrote at least a manual on fire investigation, to basically 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:01.320 come in and say, hey, can you come in here 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.200 and confirm that this guy's lying so we can put 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:11.000 him away. And Lintidi walked away from that investigation and said, well, 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:14.320