another fire blamed on electricity

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EBFD6 said:
Give us firefighters a little more credit than that!
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Have you seen that tv commercial from Nextel or Sprint, or whoever the hell runs that operation? It asks, "What if firemen ran the U.S.?" It shows a bunch of firemen with their Nextels in a congressional session:

"Here's a lot of papers that want to give us good water... You guys want good water? All those in favor of good water say 'Ay'"

I don't have the exact quote but the commercial is golden.
 
MAK said:
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Here is some kind of short circuit.:D
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Number 5 is alive!!!!!!!!!! Stephany BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
EBFD6 said:
blatantly obvious). Just because the officer being interviewed cannot pinpoint the exact point of origin at the second he is being interviewed, doesn't mean it wasn't electrical in nature.

That being said, determining the cause of a fire is extremely difficult and requires years of specialized training. Usually the quotes that you read in the paper or see on the news are from regular firefighters or fire officers and not from the fire investigators who are the ones that actually determine causation. As such you should not read too much into the "guess" that you hear quoted as it is usually not the wording that appears on the official report of the Fire Marshal's office.
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Quote from the Article:
"?It was some sort of short-circuit,? Capt. Kelenosy said of the cause oif the fire, ?but they can?t pinpoint it at this time.?"

Some sort of short-circuit, but they cannot pinpoint it at this time - give me a break, how unprofessional is that.



They just finished with the fire and know it is electrical, but cannot remember exactly where it started...in a SMALL cottage type house.
SORRY, I do not buy that. Pinpointing a fire's cause is not something to be forgotten so quickly.
I have seen WAY too many fire chiefs who think they are cause and origin experts...they are not. They may be great at fighting fires and I will give them that, not as cause and origin guys though.


We have not said there are fires that are electrical in nature. We do know that the fire departments in general will pin a fire on electrical especially if there is pressure being put on them to know.

I say that all fires should have a mandatory 2 day grace period as a law before the source of the fire is divulged to the public. This way there will not be so much pressure on the small fire departments and it will provide time for the professional Cause and Origin people to determine the actual cause.
 
don_resqcapt19 said:
Peter,
No one knows that as most fires are not investigated by a trained investigator. In many cases they are only looked at the first due company officer when he writes his report. He is under a lot of pressure not to put down "unknown" as the cuase.
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Then they should start saying it was the plumbing. It has really become way too easy to blame electrical, a real copout in my opinion. If the person responsible for writing the cause is also a fireman, he should at least attend some cause and origin classes. I know fireman train all the time as a matter of keeping their status.
 
I went to a fire investigation class, Cause and Effect.

The instructor was a guy from Canada with some very interesting theroies.

At one point about half of the fire investigators walked out and a little later about half of the the electrical industry guys walked out. Neither one liked what he had to say.

Sorry forgot who asked for the stats, but try this link, this is residential only. http://www.cpsc.gov/library/fire04.pdf
 
cowboyjwc said:
I went to a fire investigation class, Cause and Effect.

The instructor was a guy from Canada with some very interesting theroies.
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Did he happen to be the guy that talked about electricity jumping out of a GFCI receptacle on a covered porch and setting a pot of soil on fire? If so, I might have been at his class.
 
mdshunk said:
Did he happen to be the guy that talked about electricity jumping out of a GFCI receptacle on a covered porch and setting a pot of soil on fire? If so, I might have been at his class.
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No:D , but he did talk about a barn fire being listed as electrical when there was no electrical power going to the barn and one investigator that finally got in trouble for using spontainious compustion as a catch all.

He also dismissed the myth that an investigator could tell, by looking at the ends of the wire, whether it was the cause of the fire or caused by the fire.

He showed how easy you could make an arson fire look like an electrical fire. He did qualify this by saying that if you brought in a dog, it would be detected.

I will say that his methods were not very scientific, but more real life. He would take a conduit with a twenty amp circuit in it and beat it with a hammer until it shorted out or just throw wire into his fireplace and melt it to compare the cause and effect.
 
cowboyjwc said:
....He showed how easy you could make an arson fire look like an electrical fire.....
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It's very easy to do. Just remove every device, turn the terminals one turn 360? counter-clockwise, and put them back in. Do the same thing with all the terminals in the panel (hots and neutrals).
cowboyjwc said:
....He did qualify this by saying that if you brought in a dog, it would be detected.....
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A dog can sniff the difference between an accidental electrical fire and an intential electrical fire? THAT I gotta see to believe.
 
480sparky said:
A dog can sniff the difference between an accidental electrical fire and an intential electrical fire? THAT I gotta see to believe.
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What he did was show us a picture of a room with a very typical V pattern coming out of an electrical outlet and then asking everyone if they could tell where the fire started.

Of course every investigator in the room yell "outlet!". NOPE.

Then he panned back and it was just a mock up room, simply apply some lighter fluid in a V pattern from an outlet and hit it with a match. If you don't use a bunch of accelerant it will burn off and unless you suspect arson and have a trained dog to sniff it out, most investigators will jump on the electrical bandwagon, because they want to show how smart they are.
 
And yet another.....

And yet another.....

Was watching the noon news today. They showed a house fire near me.

Firefighters explained they don't know how it could catch fire, since it was abandoned and had no electricity.....:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
 
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