Customer Reviews

Physical and Technical Aspects of Fire and Arson Investigation

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This book, with its scientific sounding title, was the backbone of the arson cirriculum at the National Fire Academy at Emmitsburg, MD for over a decade. The myths that this book validated have caused literally hundreds of fire investigators to become misinformed. These investigators then passed on the misinformation, and used the misinformation to obtain arson convictions of innocent people. Example 1. The standard time-temperature curve, extracted from an ASTM test for determining fire resistance of rated assemblies, is set forth as the norm for structure fires. Fires which burn faster can therefore be said to be accelerated. (Completely untrue). Example 2. There is a photograph on p 73 showing what a room that has flashed over looks like. Unfortunately, the bottom half of the room is completely unburned, meaning that flashover could not possibly have occurred. There are literally dozens of other misinformed statements in this book. Richard Custer, former chair of NFPA 921 ordered this textbook for a class shortly after it came out. The title sounded good. He ended up using the text to show his students everything that was NOT true about fire investigation. Do not buy this book