Messing up the Profession of Expert Witness:

Yesterday I helped with a fire scene in Beverly Hills. What a mess! The fire investigator was looking at the burn and char and saying it started below the floor, the fire department was calling spontaneous combustion of used paint rags, and the adjustor for the property was going along.

I got called in as a Forensic Engineer because there was a mass of electrical wiring at the point of origin. Very suspicious!

However, although it seemed likely I could not find a single wire that showed shorting or arcking evidence. Even though breakers had tripped there was none anywhere at all. This implied the breakers tripped fast enough during the fire to completely protect the wiring and house. Good, but what happened?

We got our hands on the original fire department Fire Investigator and found pictures of the sheet rock before over-haul. Ah=-hah! Inverted-V pattern! Different scene entirely. We called the Fire Department investigator and he was very glad to get it pointed out and was going to re-review the scene. We also called the property Fire Investigator and he wasn't interested! Amazing! He could be given a key indicator as to fire origin, but since he had already written his report he was just going to leave it at that.

This certainly makes a poor representation for the profession. This doesn't just make him look bad, but it gives the whole profession of Fire Investigators a taint of incompetence. Solution: as a start, when you run into incompetent work, point out that their professional work needs to be brought up to a professional level. Maybe just pointing it out will get them to at least think about it.


Derek Geer
Forensic Engineer
San Diego, California
www.geers.com