Blaze: The Forensics of Fire [Paperback]

Nicholas Faith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2001

Focusing on the most destructive fires of modern times, Nicholas Faith details the work of these investigators as they piece together causes of ignition, observe how fire spreads and smoke flows, and attempt to understand the behavior of those unlucky souls caught in the most fearsome infernos. Their work can convict arsonists or form the bases of legislation-making buildings safer for all of us.

Including information about the cataclysmic conflagrations at the MGM Grand and Our Lady of the Angels School, Blaze features first hand testimonies from people whose lives have been scarred by their encounters with fire. Nicholas Faith examines the fire-fighters who risk their lives tackling the blazes, and the investigators, safety engineers, and forensic scientists who scour gutted rubble heaps in the hope of understanding mankind's most complicated ally-and its most dangerous foe.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rockmaster Three may have sung "The roof is on fire," but it's no party to be in a burning buildingAand no picnic to find out how fires started or to catch those who set them. London-based journalist Faith (Black Box; Mayday) has made a specialty of disaster-detectives: his taut new volume chronicles fire investigators, the professionals who determine the probable cause and course of a dangerous fire after it has been put out. Faith devotes a chapter to a 1985 casino fire in Puerto Rico, in which modern materials scientists collaborated with old-fashioned cops: present-day fire investigation, Faith explains, dates from that event. Another chapter treats other conflagrations, in the London Underground and in Dublin's Stardust disco. Faith examines the origins of and flaws in fire codes, and the surprising causes of several blazes. He devotes several chapters to arson and arsonistsAincluding to Seattle's still-mysterious late-'80s blazes set with rocket fuel and to a Philadelphia tire fire near I-95, set by a ring of teenage serial arsonists. A series of California blazes turned out, disturbingly, to be the work of a professional fire investigator, who actually wroteAand sent to a publisherAa "fact-based" novel detailing his crimes. Finally, Faith examines evacuations: how might planners understand what people do when inside a building on fire, and how might designers help them escape? Faith has picked an intrinsically riveting topic, one that combines police work, physics, design and the social sciences. Half John McPhee, half Law & Order, his book is very hard to put down. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this new work, journalist and television writer Faith looks at fire and arson investigators as well as their investigations. Drawing on both research and a series of interviews he conducted, he chronicles how fires are investigated and examines such large fires as the one that consumed Las Vegas's MGM Grand Hotel in 1980, killing 84 people and injuring 679. Unfortunately, Faith's tendency to include lengthy quotations from interviews and other sources make this short work very difficult to read. It is extremely disjointed and could have used tighter editing. Worst of all, he has taken a topic of great possible interest and made it very dull reading. Recommended only where there is considerable interest in the topic.AWilfred Drew, SUNY at Morrisville Lib.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks; 1st edition (September 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312979789
• ISBN-13: 978-0312979782
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,197,043 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Information: Diagrams Sorely Needed, May 22, 2006

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Blaze: The Forensics of Fire (Hardcover)

This book provides good information about fire behavior. One common theme of this book is the speed with which indoor fires spread. The rapid, sometimes nearly explosive growth of fires is a major factor in people not evacuating premises sooner. The rapid fire growth owes to the feedback effects of indoor fires. One of these effects is the flashover, a common phenomenon. Another is the "trench-hugging" effect, as exhibited by the King's Cross London subway fire. Still another is the radiative effect of a low ceiling, combined with a flammable plastic wall covering which releases burning drops onto yet-nonignited seats, as exemplified by the Stardust disco fire in Dublin, which grew from an innocuous one-seat fire to a multiple-seat, multiple-row deadly conflagration in only 2-3 minutes, and totally consuming of the interior in merely 5 minutes.

Modern interior materials, notably polyurethane, can produce vast amounts of carbon monoxide and suffocating, blinding smoke in just a minute or two. Although the author Faith does not discuss this further, the water-decomposing temperatures of HTA's help the reader understand why the magnesium-thermite incendiary bombs of WWII could not be extinguished by water. And, although the destruction of the World Trade Center on 911, of course, predates this book, the information about the One Meridian Plaza fire of 1991 helps the reader understand the former, albeit on a much smaller scale. In both cases, several floors of a high rise burned out of control, completely engulfing the floors, and could not be put out. Although the One Meridian Plaza building did not collapse, extensive cracking of rock material and the twisting of metal girders almost did cause a collapse.

A major shortcoming of this work is its lack of diagrams. It would be so much easier to follow what the author is saying about the British subway fire and the Dublin disco fire had these been provided. Hopefully, a subsequent edition of this book will rectify this situation.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A suprisingly good read, August 14, 2000

By 

"yoco" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blaze: The Forensics of Fire (Hardcover)

I was a little worried as I began this book that it would be a boring list of fire science facts and not much else, I could hardly have been more wrong.While most readers will learn things about how a fire starts spreads and acts Mr. Faith handles these details without missing a beat or boring the reader in the slightest."Blaze" uses real life fires, such as the MGM fire in Las Vegas, the Dupont Plazza fire in San Juan Puerto Rico and the Kings Cross underground station fire in London to detail how fires start, how they spread and most suprisingly how people react to a fire that may endanger their life.The strength of this book is in the way Mr. Faith puts it all together. Most of the chapters read like a good short mystery novel, Where did the fire start? how did it start? was it arson? if so who set it? why did they set it? Faith takes you step by step through the investigation until all the answers that that can be found are found.Many chapters aslo contain high drama: daring rescues, narrow escapes and all too often tragic and unnessacary loss of life. I highly reccomend this book for all firefighters, fire invesigators, fire buffs or anyone who enjoys reading a good mystery.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good, with minor editing and proofreading errors, December 13, 2000

By 

Richard Carl Wahl (Fort Carson, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blaze: The Forensics of Fire (Hardcover)

It was a pretty good overview of fire investigations. I was bothered by proofreading errors.

Readers of chapter 3 (p34) strained to understand how a fire could creep along a low incline rather than flame upward. They were told this was due to the "...so-called colander effect, whereby jets stick to walls." If they were imagining some sort of sieve, they were mislead. The effect which causes fluid jets to bend around gentle curves is properly called the Coanda effect, named after a hydraulics theoretician.

A few other minor errors like a "Kray-2" supercomputer mar the account, which is otherwise good reading.

I was happy to see a chapter discounting the widespread belief that crowds of people tend to panic in fires.