Five Points of Origin Does NOT Equal Arson

Entertainment Center:
Red arrow shows parts still in place. None had been moved as part of the fire investigation. It was said that the Entertainment Center was "carefully examined" and ruled out as a cause of the fire.

Dan McIntyre is a professional fire fighter and has been a staff member of Corporate Investigative Services, Ltd. For over fifteen years. He has lectured in various professional forums regarding fire investigations. He is also a Certified NYS Paramedic.

In one of the more bizarre arson related cases of the twentieth Century, a denial of payment based on an allegation that the house had five points of origin came to a close in NYS with the jury quickly finding for the Plaintiff and giving her all the money she had asked for plus interest.

The New York State case began when a woman had a fire in her home that came to court about three years after the fire. Following the fire, the local fire chief reported the fire as an electrical fire. Several days later a private fire investigator hired by the Carrier came to the scene and reported multiple points of origin and concluded it was an intentionally set fire. The fire investigators for the insurance company took numerous samples and sent them to a lab in the Midwest. One sample allegedly came back positive for Gasoline. The fire chief never changed his report and continued to report the fire as an electrical event.

There was no dispute that the insured owner of the residence was home at the time of the fire. She was on the phone talking to her brother in a Southern City. She had been on the phone for twenty minutes prior to the fire being reported.

Earlier in the day the resident had disconnected one smoke detector because it kept activating and she did not know why.

The insured was also known to be a woman who had a lot of pets in her house and used candles and incense to dispel any odors. The day of the fire was no exception.

The problem arose for the Defendants when they strayed into areas that were not provable. Their fire expert insisted that there was no flashover in the premises. Photographs taken by several residents clearly showed that there was a flashover condition.

Their report also indicated that they had “carefully examined” the entertainment center and electrical outlets and were able to determine that there was no electrical malfunction. The problem was that the outlets and the entertainment center were a molten and melted “glob” that was found outside the residence where the fire department had thrown items during overhaul. The items had never been examined “carefully” or otherwise. The statement in the report was simply a gratuitous statement. The outlets had never been opened or examined as they were sealed in place by melted plastic.

Power Strip:
Red arrow shows the multiple outlet strip that was also said to be "carfully examined. Note it had not been touched and was found in place some five months after it was said to have been carefully examined.

The wire system in the house dated back to the 1900’s and left more than a little bit to be desired.

To complicate matters, the laboratory that was used by the fire investigators contracted by the insurance carrier failed to comply to standards of the ASTM. This left some serious questions about the accuracy of their results on even the one positive sample. A study of the Gas Chromatograph results indicated some serious flaws in the procedures used. In the end the lab samples were not even a part of the evidence presented to the jury.

Burn tests of the carpet indicated that the carpet was subject to melting and resulting flowing of the carpet system leaving distinct “burn patterns” and “pooling” that could be interpreted as a liquid spill. It was a very old carpet.

By dismissing flashover as an event in the fire it became easier to convince a jury that the burn patterns were “low burns”. The problem in such an analysis is that if you do not take flashover into consideration you can become side tracked. In addition, the fire investigators said that they did not need to take airflow or current movement into consideration in their evaluation. This is clearly wrong.

Becoming side tracked is easy if you have tunnel vision. Once you take a course of action in an investigation that allows you to only see one cause for the fire then it becomes easy to fit the pieces into the puzzle-albeit not correctly.

Assuming that the fire investigators were acting in a professional manner then their comprehension of the most recent research on fire movement and fire growth was seriously flawed. The end result was that a woman spent three years seeking redress for an event that should have been closed long ago.

Perhaps her most poignant comment after the trial was that she did not care about the money. She only wanted her name cleared and to prove that she had nothing to do with the fire.