I myself thinks way more effort is needed to be made in the determining of the origin of fires and or other hazards, I know it can be hard work in many cases where much of the evidence is damaged to the point beyond even recognizing what it even was, but in most cases arcs and shorts can be determined under a microscope, as it leaves tell tale signs on the conductors and other conductive surfaces even if all the insulation has been burned off.
I have had an interest in this area ever since I had a fire at a guard shack that was mistakenly thought to have been caused by the electric wiring in the guard shack by the local fire investigator, but the burn patterns clearly showed it was caused by a wall air unit with electric heat.
I was able to get UL involved from Chicago who agreed with me and also found that the problem with these heat/air units was dangerous as it was easily repeatable by just putting the fan speed control between speeds or just stalling the blower motor which in these unit also acted as the condenser fan motor, so that the fan motor stopped but the heating element would continue to heat, UL was allowing a automatic reseting high temp limit that would allow the heat element to re-energize which would slowly cause the plastic shroud that enclosed the heating element and blower wheel to slowly droop to the point it made contact with the element and being made out of ABS plastic it was very flammable and would burst into a fire which also would ignite the plastic front grill, the blower wheel it's self, which was also injected molded ABS plastic, this burning plastic would start dropping burning balls of this flaming plastic onto the floor which is why the fire investigator thought it started under the unit first not the other way around, UL had me report this problem to CPSC as they did also and a recall was issued for thousands of units manufactured under the Fedders and Sears cold spot brand names as well as a few others, UL revised their specifications to make sure this could never happen again.
If the above fire would have happened in a home with children it could have easily led to loss of life and I believe there were some reports of this latter on.
The above is just one reason why it is so important to know the correct cause as without this information the correct fixes can never be made, I have made this statement many times on here and recently in the threads about the electrocutions in the lakes which sadly took the lives of children, as we will never be able to make the right corrections that need to be made to stop these dangers and many others, and we wind up with codes and or designs on consumer products that are not really correcting the real problem if really addressing a problem that is not there.
I know Don who is also a fireman (I think) has also made similar remarks as such and wishes the same goal as anyone should, I would offer my services to any fire department who would like my opinion in helping find hard to determine causes if time allows, and had made such an offer to the many FD's around here in my area, this is not about the money as if I can help save one more life to me it would be worth the effort to help in any way I can to save lives.
We need more people who has this knowledge to offer help with these kinds of investigations, not to just find out what happened but to offer solutions that will get things going in the right directions to a goal of eliminating these dangers, boat docks needs inspections, but its hard because home owners have the right to privacy and protection against illegal search and seizure, but public areas don't have these same rights and should be required to be periodically inspected, voltage to earth detection devices should be developed that not only can remove the circuit voltage but also remove the EGC voltage path when detecting a present of voltage on the grounding, there devices like this for RV's but do not disconnect the grounding if a voltage is detected on the grounding, a modification would not be hard to do to also remove this problem of voltage on the EGC caused by some of the reasons I stated in the other thread.
I know some would cringe at even thinking of having an automatic device to disrupt the EGC path, but if all circuit voltage and including the neutral was disconnected I see no reason it could not also disconnect the EGC, as this is the only way to make sure all power is removed when a voltage is detected to earth which is the main reason for these tragedies.
GFCI's are not design to do this, while in their own right they are a great life saving device we need something to detect for voltage to earth even from the EGC, and if a boat is hooked to shore power and has a metal hull it too also needs this detection that would remove all connections to the shore power including the EGC, this goes for any shore power located close to a lake where swimming could happen intentionally or planed.
But like I said we need the proper investigation to determine the correct problem so that a proper fix can be found and codes implemented to force changes to make a safer electrical system.
I hope this can be understood as I meant it, as I have for a long time known that this has been a big problem.
I know I repeted myself above, but it is very important to understand the importance that I feel this problem is.
I dont think there is a person here who understands trouble shooting, that will dispute how hard it can be if you do not know what kind of problem you are looking for, and how hard it will be to do the correct fix, we need correct investagations done before we can fix it.
