...Arson Investigator The reason I decided to choose this topic, and not something about a particular part of the fire service, is because I was watching a TV show CSI where they solve crimes and such. Well this topic of fire fighter arson was on the show where a fire fighter set a fire on purpose. So I decided that it looked interesting considering it is what I want to do. Fire fighter arson is basically when a fire fighter sets a fire and I will break it down on why some fire fighters do it, affects of fire fighter arson, basic profile of the fire fighter arsonist, fire service responsibilities in preventing fire fighter arson, and actions to take when a problem is suspected. There were a number of people who had been arrested for this crime and were willing to share their motivations. The biggest reason was people were looking for recognition and liked to play the role of a hero. These people would get a thrill to be the reporting party or to be first on the scene. Another reason is a person might have a psychiatric problem that they have towards the fascination with fire. While others have a low self-esteem or self-confidence, and they want to feel like they belong to a group and are accepted by others. There are many effects of fire fighter arson, which all are very clear cut effects, they include the possibility of injury, loss of life, property and financial loss due to fire, and the increase of insurance premiums that we pay when arson occurs. This crime of arson will...
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...Risk-factors for Arson Thankfully, over the past year the rates of arson in the US have dropped around 3%, according to the FBI preliminary semiannual crime statistics. While a decrease in crime is almost always a good thing, understanding what risk factors are associated with the crime, and knowing what can be done to further prevent the crime from occurring in the first place, are integral parts of further deterring a specific crime. However, when people think of arson, they rarely know what factors lead a person to commit it. There isn’t nearly as clear a picture of an arsonist as one may have of a thief or hackers. While there may not be as clear an image of what an arsonist looks like, there are multiple studies done to show what may...
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...Tania Moshirian A10023469 USP 100 September 3rd, 2014 Website Final Draft The Collapse Detroit, Michigan: a city where more than 1.1 million people have vanished in the past 60 years. The city has dropped 25% in population just in the last 10 years. The city crumbled apart, which forced people to abandon their houses and businesses, leaving them with nothing. Even hospitals and religious structures were abandoned--and are still abandoned--with no demand to fill them. Ultimately, the auto industry was hit the hardest. With a systematic city, there was nowhere for the people to find jobs, since the auto industry was also hurting. More than 200,000 people worked in the auto industry in the mid-20th century. Since the slow migration out of Detroit, the number fell to 100,000 people in the early 21st century. People have compared the migration out of Detroit to the whole city of San Francisco being deserted. More than 1.1 million people have left the city over the past decades. With economic downward spiral, Detroit hit its lowest point. With less than 750,000 people living in the city, it has been hard for local government to get money for the federal government for urban aid--leaving people still living in the city to suffer more. Detroit was named the poorest city in the nation, with one out of three people living below federal poverty. (1) With so many people suffering, it led to many fires. Buildings and houses were burning rapidly. There were two...
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...the Department of Financial Services (DFS) State Fire Marshals is a well managed, properly functioning organization that provides the most pristine service to its communities, when referenced to the above mentioned functions. The Department of Financial Services (DFS) is a state organization that has many divisions encompassing anywhere from financial accounting to law enforcement investigations. Under this organization, the Division of State Fire Marshals is a law enforcement investigations unit that conducts origin and cause investigations into fires throughout the state of Florida. The Bureau of Fire and Arson Investigations is the state law enforcement branch within this Division and are responsible for investigating fires both accidental and criminal. Dating back to 1973, the State Fire Marshal’s office was established and its main purpose was “suppression of arson and the investigation of the cause, origin, and circumstances of fire” (“DFS SFM History”, 2012). In 1976, the bureau became law enforcement recognized and currently today has over 100 sworn officers. The bureau operates twenty-four hours, seven days a week, as...
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...152-01FW M3 Writing Assignment Arson is the criminal act of deliberately setting fire to property. This could be a malicious act or an act to collect insurance. In North Carolina, there are two degrees of arson. Per G.S. 14-58 under Article 15, If someone burns a dwelling and it was occupied at the time, then it is arson in the first degree which is a Class D felony. If the dwelling was burned and it was unoccupied then it is arson in the second degree and a Class G felony. Arson is one of the hardest crimes to get a conviction on. With that being said, it is very important for firefighters to understand the basics of arson investigation and understand the statues for arson. Since firefighters are the first on the scene of fire incidents they are the first...
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...FSE 101: FIRE PREVENTION RESEARCH PROJECT THE HAPPY LAND FIRE BY RAY CHESNEY EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY Introduction: The Happy Land Fire was an arson fire that killed 87 people on March 25, 1990 in the Happy Land Social Club, The Bronx, New York. Most of the victims were young ethnic Hondurans. Event History: 87 people died of smoke inhalation at the “Happy Land Social Club”. The fire was started by a 36-year-old man who earlier had been ejected from the club after an altercation with his former girlfriend, who worked at the club. He went to a nearby gas station, filled a plastic container with a dollar’s worth of gasoline, and returned to the club. He threw the gasoline into the only entrance of the club and then lit matches to ignite the fire. Smoke quickly filled the first floor of the club, where 18 people were found dead. Smoke billowed up the narrow staircases to the second floor where there were 69 fatalities. All of the decedents died in the building, and none were resuscitated. Five people escaped and survived. Aftermath: Julio González was found guilty on 87 counts of arson and 87 counts of murder on August 19, 1991. He received the sentence maximum of 25 years to life for each count. The most substantial prison term ever imposed in New York state. He will be eligible for parole in March 2015. The owners of the building that housed Happy Land club were found not criminally responsible, since...
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...in a particular installation. a. wet pipe b. dry pipe c. stand pipe d. sprinkler 70. the product of the fire that is detected by gas chromatogram and ion spectrometer. a. flames b. heat c. soot d. fire gases 71. fires involving electrical equipment and may be extinguish by means of carbon dioxide, dry chemical and vaporizing liquids. a. class A b. class C c. class B d. class D 72. fires involving flammable metals such as magnesium, potassium, powdered, aluminum, zinc, etc. which may be extinguished by means of G.I type methyl, dry sand. a. class A b. class C c. class B d. class D 73. the act to set fire with the preparation of inflammable material at the place to be burned. a. consummated arson b. attempted arson c. frustrated arson d. no crime 74. it is considered as acts of group fire setters, EXCEPT. a. done by means of vandalism by teenagers or peer pressure b. riot fires c. political fires d. enemy fire 75. a mechanical device of supplying water which can be manual or motor drive. a. fire pump b. wet pipe system c. stand pipe d. dry pipe system 76. if coming from material with the petroleum base such as rubber, coals, turpentine or petrol gum the color of the smoke...
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...Impact on Arson Cases Journal Article by Kevin Weitzel Arson investigation is an ever changing field of science and crime investigation. Arson investigators need to be highly educated in their field and unfortunately most are not properly educated resulting in many high profile cases being unfinished or citizens being wrongly convicted. This paper will cover an article by John J. Lentini discussing these topics. Fire investigation is a complex field of work that unfortunately is not drawing in college graduates because of its low pay scale. This in turn makes being a fire investigator just a matter of learning from the older more experienced fire investigators who they themselves were never properly educated. To quote Lentini (p. 1 2012) “The reality is that the fire investigation profession has within its ranks a large number of individuals who don’t know what they’re doing”. This is quite a disturbing thing to read, professional testimonies we rely on to send people away for 10, 20, or even 50 years in prison could be complete hacks, taught by hacks, and really have no idea what they’re doing but nobody else will question them either, which makes all of this a lot worse. In 1994, a group of scientists including John J. Lentini developed a position paper stating that an accelerate detecting canine (ADC) alert was in fact not suitable for a jury to hear but were in fact much more suitable as a means to prove probable cause to keep searching or to start an arson investigation...
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...spread out from its original source, its potential to change direction unexpectedly, and its ability to jump gaps such as roads, rivers and fire breaks. Wildfires are 'quasi-natural' hazards, meaning that they are not entirely natural features (like volcanoes, earthquakes and tropical storms). This is because they are caused by human activity as well. The four major natural causes of wildfire ignitions are lightning, volcanic eruption, sparks from rockfalls, and spontaneous combustion. The thousands of coal seam fires that are burning around the world, such as those in Centralia, Burning Mountain, and several coal-sustained fires in China, can also flare up and ignite nearby flammable material. The most common human sources of wildfires are arson, discarded cigarettes, sparks from equipment, and power line arcs (as detected by arc mapping). There are mainly 4 types of forest fires. They are:- Ground fires are fed by subterranean roots, duff and other buried organic matter. This fuel type is especially susceptible to ignition due to spotting. Ground fires typically burn by smoldering, and can burn slowly for days to months, such as peat fires in Kalimantan and Eastern Sumatra, Indonesia, which resulted from a riceland creation project that unintentionally drained and dried the peat. Crawling or surface fires are fueled by low-lying vegetation such as leaf and timber litter, debris, grass,...
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...Uncontrolled blazes fueled by weather, wind, and dry underbrush, wildfires can burn acres of land—and consume everything in their paths—in mere minutes. On average, more than 100,000 wildfires, also called wildland fires or forest fires, clear 4 million to 5 million acres (1.6 million to 2 million hectares) of land in the U.S. every year. In recent years, wildfires have burned up to 9 million acres (3.6 million hectares) of land. A wildfire moves at speeds of up to 14 miles an hour (23 kilometers an hour), consuming everything—trees, brush, homes, even humans—in its path. HOW THEY ARE FORMED There are three conditions that need to be present in order for a wildfire to burn, which firefighters refer to as the fire triangle: fuel, oxygen, and...
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...Wildfires have become a major problem over the last several years all across the United States. According to National Geographic, they can be all over the United States, but the western part of the country is the most susceptible. They estimate that just last year we lost between four to five million acres of land to wildfires all over the United States. They also estimate that some wildfires can move up to fourteen miles per hour. What people do not often realize is when you throw a cigarette butt out your car window, it has a chance to start a fire. Other factors than can contribute to the starting of a fire are a campfire, the sun itself, lightning, and hot winds. National Geographic also says that four out of every five fires are started because of people. There is no positive to having a wildfire, but it does help to replenish all the nutrients in the soil by getting rid of all the dead matter. The most common way to fight wildfires is by spraying it with water and using fire retardants. Another way is to clear the vegetation that helps to keep fires burning by setting up boundaries around the fire. Fighting wildfires has become an expensive problem in the United States. Today there is a huge wildfire being fought out west that is destroying everything in its way. Fox News reports that this fire that is close to San Francisco has destroyed over 1000 homes. One of the firemen battling the massive fire was said to have watched his house get taken out by the fire as he battled...
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...Q: Explain the fire principals of wildland fires. And how their behavior differs from structure fires. The basic fire principals consist of five principals that go into fire behavior. Principal one is the fire triangle or Tetrahedron. The fire triangle consists of having heat, fuel, and oxygen. Removing one of these elements from the triangle and the fire will eventually die out. Principal two is method of heat transfer. Therefore, if heat is transfer from direct contact, liquid or air. A fire of some sort could arise. Methods such as convection, conduction, and radiation. Which is known to be the number one cause of any fire exposure. Principal three in stages and fire growth. This talks about the stages of a fires lowest point of ignition temperature, to its highest of peak of flame point. Principal four is thermal layering. This is the process at which all oxygen is pushed towards the ground and causing al heat to rise to its extreme heat. Principal five is the last of the basic principles. Flashover. A flashover is the point at which all or any combustible materials reach their ignition temperature. How do these principals apply to wildland fires? Easy A wildland fire is any fire that is not taking place inside a structure facility, typically in the wildlands. Wildland fires at almost in any case uses elements of the fire triangle. Once the fire is ignited, the fire uses some sort of direct contact or radiation as in method two to spread out amongst the area. Once the fire...
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... Charcoal deposits in soil samples provides evidence of bushfires as far back as one hundred thousand years ago. This charcoal allows scientists to analyse the frequency of bushfires in Australia, and speculate about main causes for change. In the absence of human interference, the most common instigator of bushfires are lightning strikes which we can trace back to the beginning of time. For this fact bushfires were common but few such years ago. However, since the arrival of Aboriginal Australians from the North fifty thousand years ago, their has been an increased spike in charcoal deposits from soil samples. The need of fire for hunting, heat, traditional ceremonies, and the necessity of fire as a resource has caused this exponential incline. This is evident in the rapid increase of charcoal deposits in our soil as can be seen in this graph: This skyrocket since the introduction of human life to Australia has thereby impacted the rainforest environment that once thrived on these lands. Australian organisms have been forced to adapt over time to withstand the rising frequency of Bushfire occurrences over the past 50000 years. These species have been forced to adapt to the conditions in order to prosper in the unrelenting Australian bushland environment. The Banksia fruit is an example of a native Australian plant adapting over time to survive the fatal bushfires in Australia. As a result they have formed a unique adaptation which requires heat to release their seeds - this...
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...Why the Ventura Wildfire Is So Explosive Summary: “Why the Ventura Wildfire Is So Explosive” is an article on the Scientific American’s website, and was written by Andrea Thompson on December 6, 2017. She explained that, “A disastrous combination of tinder-dry vegetation, the strongest Santa Ana winds . . . and a spark caused wildfire to explode.” Thompson also stated how unusual wildfires were at this time of the year, as they would at least get some precipitation to lower the fire risk, but due to the climate changes, many wildfires have broken out. She took time to explain what Santa Ana winds, or katabatic winds were, and how they raise the risk of the fires. Out of the five fires in the Los Angeles area, the fire in Ventura had the greatest...
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...I am a Goddess of Arson. I work to inspire others to light their creative fires and shine as lights to the rest of the world. I am incomplete without this fire, and it stands even til this day, as many have tried to extinguish it. I take this creative duty seriously, because someone, along the way, lit my fire and inspired me to do theatre. Ever since, I have immersed myself in the world of theatre, and I never knew it would impact me the way that it has. These last few years, under the instruction of Elizabeth Walpert, I have learned more life lessons and revelations than I have in the past sixteen years of my life. This school year has most easily become the most monumental, for I learned what I wanted to do for the rest of my life: inspire those around me through a love of the arts and God....
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