I Am Convinced This Happens Every Day

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Pierre C Belarge

Pierre C Belarge

Senior Member
Location
Westchester County, New York
Got called to a job where the EC wanted to try and get power restored after a pretty severe fire to a dwelling. I get there and check his work, which was fine. My path crossed the insurance company adjuster, of course I asked if he was aware of the cause of the fire....take a wild guess what he said, I don't even have to say it here.


Well, I kind of laid into him a little. about how so many fires are blamed on electrical. We discussed it for a while and he told me that the cause and origin person had not even been to the site.:mad:
So, someone just figured it was electrical.


I will say that the box and area they showed me as what they thought was the cause was in very bad shape from the fire.

But...as I walked through the house (where there was not too much damage) I noticed some very shoddy electrical work (When I got to the site, it was about 5 days after the fire, and most of the walls and ceilings were gutted. Lots of water damage-mold issues.


Most of the wiring in the house is very, very old. There was some additional work that have been added, with NM cable - the equipment ground in some of the installs had been snipped off. Most of the receptacles in the dwelling were changed out to 3-wire devices. All of the receptacles I saw were still wired with the very, very old "BX".
 
I use to be a volunteer fireman and can tell you it happens often. If you plug in a space heater and pack pillows against it they will call that an electrical fire. There should be a category for stupidity. :grin:
 
I know a couple of firemen. They tell me that when they don't know for sure what the cause of a blaze is they blame electrical. You can always find a junction box/ outlet box that has been in the worst part of the fire regardless if it had anything to do with the starting of that fire.
 
Pierre C Belarge said:
Well, I kind of laid into him a little. about how so many fires are blamed on electrical. We discussed it for a while and he told me that the cause and origin person had not even been to the site.:mad:
So, someone just figured it was electrical.
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...and considering your last fire post, I'd say don't blame fires on electrical in front of Pierre. ;)

Seems like it would be a hard thing to blame on the installer. Systems often don't get properly maintained, or they get altered, or a problem arises and it doesn't get fixed promtly, or people just misuse equipment.

Where is the line drawn between installer caused fires and end user caused fires?
 
I don't mind so many fires being blamed on "electrical". That makes the DIY more gun shy of doing his own wiring, and keeps the professional electrician in higher regard.
 
mdshunk said:
I don't mind so many fires being blamed on "electrical". That makes the DIY more gun shy of doing his own wiring, and keeps the professional electrician in higher regard.
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You sure do figure out how to look on the bright side of things Marc.:grin:
 
mdshunk said:
I don't mind so many fires being blamed on "electrical". That makes the DIY more gun shy of doing his own wiring, and keeps the professional electrician in higher regard.
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Marc
If that were so, I would also agree. But the fact of the matter is that this does not help our industry at all. Most people still equate electrical work as being installed by electricians...when a fire is deemed electrical they are thinking electricians performed the work.
 
mdshunk said:
I don't mind so many fires being blamed on "electrical". That makes the DIY more gun shy of doing his own wiring, and keeps the professional electrician in higher regard.
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Same here, a little fear of wiring is a good thing.
 
When I was an apprentice I helped my buddy after work on a large low-income housing project because he was behind schedule. They were Apts.
Well after we had just finished trimming and hot punching a large section, over the weekend it burned down. Cause,"Electrical Fire".My buddy and everyone on the crew,including me were interrogated by the insurance inspector,electrical inspector,fire marshal and the many lawyers.My buddy is'nt a hack by any means. "By the rules guy." They ran my friend thru the mud with acusitions without directly saying, but implying he was untrained and incompetent as an electrician. He even started to believe it and almost left the trade. The final outcome of the investigation was "ARSON." No apologies or anything. Just total scum-bags.
 
mdshunk said:
I don't mind so many fires being blamed on "electrical". That makes the DIY more gun shy of doing his own wiring, and keeps the professional electrician in higher regard.
Click to expand...


I also agree with Marc, so many of my customers say I will do this that and the other but I don't touch electrical it will kill you or start a fire and then kill you.

You can't stop hacks and some of the new homes that have been wired to minimum by large EC's paying next to nothing for labor and cutting every corner. Well thats good for me too, so many of those homeowners will not call the guy who has the sticker in the panel because they don't like the original work anyway. The stickers I put in the panel say "Upgrades to the electrical system performed by Willett Electric" and I stick them under the original EC's sticker.
 
Pierre C Belarge said:
Most people still equate electrical work as being installed by electricians...when a fire is deemed electrical they are thinking electricians performed the work.
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So you've polled most people?

I must disagree wholeheartedly.
 
Fires

Fires

I am an Elec Insp and I work with our fire inspectors all the time just because they are quick to claim electrical causes. But I have made some head way becuase no they look for other things before they classifiy electrical cause. It takes a lot of education but it is worth it.
 
Pierre C Belarge said:
Marc
If that were so, I would also agree. But the fact of the matter is that this does not help our industry at all. Most people still equate electrical work as being installed by electricians...when a fire is deemed electrical they are thinking electricians performed the work.
Click to expand...

One of my biggest fears is after I am done with a job, and especially where it's a job that I did not do all the wiring (say, a residential addition, or a bay build-out in a strip mall) is that there will be a fire that's deemed electrical, and every eye will turn to me, even though the fire was caused by the electrical portion I had nothing to do with.

I remember well wiring a new school for a church. The church decided their old building wasn't safe any more (it was built in 1907). So during construction of the new building, the old one caught fire. (Fortunately, during summer so it was empty) It was easy to determine the cause.... the main switchgear had failed. So on the news that night was "The Top Story", about an electrical fire at the old St. Xxxxxx school. Then they showed video of a coworker who had exited the new building to look around at the activity during the fire.... complete with his company T-shirt and hat emblazoned with the company name & logo!

He never lived that on down!
 
Having answered many fire jobs i can safely say most were not electrical.Lightning and stupidy were far more than half and of them it was handyman type work.Things like 30 amp fuses on #12,insulation over recess cans play a large factor.But just like the weather men they got to blame something.I personally followed a fire chief into apartment of my x brother in law (after fire was out) i was impressed we quickley found the coleman fuel can and it was arson.It only lacked reasonable cause to arrest him.They do try but often get it wrong.
 
mdshunk said:
So you've polled most people?

I believe this is a rhetorical question.



I must disagree wholeheartedly.
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The good part about this site is we can agree to disagree.




Yet it is a fact that in almost every case, when I talk to people about a fire, the first question is usually "was it electrical?"

It has been that way long before I entered this industry.
 
Years ago, I replaced a Sq D 208Y panel in a fabrication shop. It had mostly 3 pole breakers that were for the welders. The panel was the middle panel of three.

About a week later, the whole building burned to the ground. Cause? Yep. The middle panel was the source.

I was questioned once, but nothing came from it. I later found out from my buddy's brother, a fireman, that an explosion proof jelly jar was left off the paint booth light. The lighting circuit was in the panel I changed out. There was no light switch, just turn on the breaker.

Insurance paid out, New shop built. Nothing else was ever said.
 
mdshunk said:
I don't mind so many fires being blamed on "electrical". That makes the DIY more gun shy of doing his own wiring, and keeps the professional electrician in higher regard.
Click to expand...

Pierre C Belarge said:
Marc
If that were so, I would also agree. But the fact of the matter is that this does not help our industry at all. Most people still equate electrical work as being installed by electricians...when a fire is deemed electrical they are thinking electricians performed the work.
Click to expand...

I have to say that I have not come across one single person that has ever hinted to me that I would probably burn somebody's house down. So I would say that there isn't any kind of general consensus that electricians are responsible for the fires.

Electricity is a mystery to most. Most people look at me with admiration that I can work with electricity without fear.
 
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