June 16, 2024 • 43 mins
Ready to unlock the secrets of effective fire scene investigation?
Discover the hidden gems of fire investigation and specialized training in our milestone 20th episode of the CSI on Fire Podcast, where we bring you unparalleled insights from industry experts.
With special guest Emma Wilson from Prometheus Forensic Services, we promise an episode brimming with captivating narratives and professional growth opportunities.
From her intriguing career shift from medical biochemistry to fire investigation, Emma’s wealth of experience will inspire and educate you.
Step into the world of specialized CSI training courses designed to fine-tune your skills in handling fire scenes.
Hear about immersive exercises like boil-overs and petrol bomb scenarios that not only equip you with practical knowledge but also debunk the myth that fire obliterates all evidence.
Learn about the crucial procedures for preserving the scene of a fire fatality and the details that can reveal the victim's last moments. This episode provides a comprehensive guide on the importance of context in fire investigations, including the role of clothing materials in flash burns and how to distinguish genuine fire damage from other causes.
Dive into the complexities of forensic reviews, cognitive biases, and the legal safeguards that ensure justice is accurately served. Gain valuable insights on the evolving landscape of forensic services from Emma, including the benefits and challenges posed by privatization. This episode encapsulates two decades of expertise, making it an essential listen for anyone dedicated to the field of fire investigation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, welcome to CSI on Fire, the podcast that takes
you behind the scenes of thefire investigation community.
I'm your host, mike Moulden,and episode after episode, we'll
attempt to excavate the oftendifficult but always fascinating
world of the fire investigator.
Hi and welcome to CSI on Fire.
(00:26):
Just a very quick one before weactually start the episode.
This week this is episode 20for us, so that's fantastic.
I just wanted to give a shoutout to a couple of CPD
opportunities, which is the mainone for the UK Association of
Fire Investigation Summitconference coming up on the 1st
of july, that's in nottingham.
(00:47):
We're going to have a bit ofexciting news in relation to csi
on fire in regard to that.
Another one to give a shout outto a couple of podcasts in
focus fire investigation withthe great scott coleman and
chastity owens really, reallyinteresting every couple of
weeks just started off I thinkthey're on episode four or
episode five, but yeah, givethat a listen.
(01:07):
Fantastic, really interesting,lovely dynamic between the two
of them, and they've startedgetting other guests in, really
knowledgeable guys and girls whoare then coming in and giving
some CPD.
I also want to give a shout outto Voucher, who actually got me
into podcasting the FireScience Show.
So if you're particularlyinterested in fire protection
and the other end of fireinvestigation before what should
(01:30):
be there, what shouldn't bethere give Voucher's podcast a
look at.
It's really interesting.
It's got some great guests onthere, some really big names in
the fire investigation and fireprotection world, and he's just
reached his third yearanniversary.
So congratulations to you.
And finally, firebug is a greatpodcast.
It's a case study of john orr.
I won't go too much into thatbut I won't spoil the podcast.
(01:53):
But it's about a fireinvestigator and how he
investigate, goes about fires,and it's got a bit of a twist at
the end.
It's a real story, true story,and it's one that certainly got
me into podcasting and listeningto podcasts.
So give that a recommend aswell.
That's firebug.
A couple of other cpd thingsdon't forget cfi trainer.
Uh, part of the iaai.
I've got various different bitsand pieces you can go on to and
(02:15):
do some.
They've got a great brand newone on in relation to duck fires
, kitchen fires, duck firesequipment and that kind of stuff
.
And also I wanted to give ashout out to Dakari.
If you look in Dakari, theyhave got a number of fantastic
webinars and I've been goingthrough a few of those.
Actually, you get a certificateat the end of it, so it adds to
CPD.
(02:36):
So, yeah, thoroughly recommendDakari as well.
If you just type in GoogleDakari, d-c-a-r-i, they've got a
series of webinars, all by verycredible, well-known people in
the fire investigation community.
So yeah, that's it.
Just give it a quick shout outfor some of my colleagues and
some of the other trainingopportunities out there in the
world.
If guests or if podcasters,listeners, have got any other
(02:59):
suggestions, then please justsend us an email wwwcsonfirecom
and we'll stick them on as thiskind of new section.
Okay, on with the show.
Okay, so welcome to CSI on FireFire Investigation Podcast.
I've got a fantastic guest ontoday.
I've been after Emma for quitesome time but she's a very busy
person and we'll get into that alittle bit later.
(03:20):
But Emma Wilson from Prometheus, thanks very much for coming on
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Thank you very much for having me, Mike.
I'm sorry it took so long tojoin up our diaries.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
That's all right.
I know that you're busy.
We very nearly got it.
I think it was last week andyou got called out.
So, emma, as I do for all ofour guests, just take us through
your history in fireinvestigation.
Take us from what inspired you,how you got into it right up to
the modern day, if you would.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Unlike a lot of fire investigators, I sort of fell
into it a little bit.
I did a bachelor's degree inmedical biochemistry and then I
did a master's degree inbiomolecular archaeology and
then I thought I should probablytry and get a job.
I applied for whatever work Icould get in forensics and I
ended up at the Forensic ScienceService down in London
Obviously quite a big move forme, being from the Northeast.
(04:07):
So I went down there and Istarted working in D&E All very
good work, all very boring, satin a lab type of stuff, though
Didn't really enjoy it that much.
I enjoyed people and it was agood job, just at university
sort of thing, but it wasn'twhat I wanted it to be for
forensics.
So then, good job, just at theuniversity sort of thing, but it
wasn't what I wanted it to befor forensics.
So then I moved to toxicology.
(04:27):
I even did a bit of drug workand then a job came up in fires.
I didn't even at the timerealize that the forensic
science service had a fireinvestigation unit, because they
were down a little corridorpast the canteen and nobody ever
went that way.
Everybody just turned into thecanteen.
So I applied for the job and Ihappened to get it, and that was
in 2005.
(04:48):
So I trained a bit in-house,mostly for those two years
started my very first trialinvestigation on my own was in
December 2007 in Kent and sincethen that's all I've done, just
investigated, investigated fires, done lab work around it as
well.
So the first bit of trainingwas in the lab work side of
(05:08):
stuff sort of GCMS, flammableliquid analysis, flash burning,
that sort of thing.
And then, as some people mightknow, the FSS shut in 2012.
So we were given about a year'snotice for redundancy, more or
less in the end.
So me and a couple of othersdecided to set up on our own.
There wasn't anybody elsereally looking to continue doing
(05:32):
fire investigation in the sameway.
Obviously there are lots ofother organizations out there.
There's the bigger forensiccompanies and there's your
insurance companies, who all dofire investigation but they
weren't looking to do it the waywe had been trained to do it.
A lot of them were looking formultidisciplinary and that
wasn't us.
We'd spent too long just doingfires.
It would have taken quite a lotto retrain us.
(05:54):
So we set up in 2012, january2012 to the 9th of January 2012
was our first working daysPrometheus, and we're still
going getting stronger andstronger.
We're still small, but we arelooking for more staff.
It's gone from strength tostrength and we're still here.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
You were at Lambeth, weren't you?
So I was at Lambeth as well.
But I always remember the fireinvestigation unit was where
there was a bit of mysteryaround it, because no one ever
got recruited as a fireinvestigator, did they?
It was always kind of you weretaken in if you were good enough
, and it was kind of like andI'm not blowing smoke, but it's
just always seen like, oh,they're almost like they're the
special ones, because the FSSnever advertised for a fire
(06:35):
investigator.
They were just sort of broughtin from other areas.
I remember my time, this kind ofmystique when I was at Lambeth.
I was only there for a veryshort time when I was at Lambeth
.
I was only there for a veryshort time, but when I was there
there was this kind of mystiquearound the fire investigation
unit.
But I think the thing as wellto say about the FSS was that
you'll obviously allude to itmore, but the FSS got involved
in all of the major fireinvestigations and all the
fatalities.
(06:55):
So you really got a massiveamount of experience there,
didn't you?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Oh yeah, the training criteria for a new fire
investigator was that you wereexpected to go out to at least
100 fires in your first year, or18 months or so, in order to be
signed off.
And that was without all of thelab work and looking at other
people's fires that they'd goneout to.
So there was a lot.
There were a lot of fires to goto.
We were called out to virtuallyeverything.
(07:21):
It was the full range, andthat's the thing that's
different now.
So back then, as a firescientist, you would get called
out to pretty much anything, butnow it's mostly when there's a
fatality, when there's a personabout to be arrested or when
they think it's linked tosomething else.
The criteria has definitelychanged.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, yeah, and you are.
Prometheus are pretty muchbased in most populated
southeast of the UK.
You do specialise.
You are kind of a little bit.
I mean, I know there are acouple of other providers out
there, but Prometheus if you'rea CSI within the UK pretty much
everyone knows Prometheus's name.
You and I have worked on acouple of jobs together and you
do training as well for CSIs.
Your training courses are wellknown.
Tell us a little bit more aboutyour training courses, because
(08:07):
every CSI that I speak to go oh,it's a great course.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So tell us a little bit why you think that's the
case.
So one of the big things for usis that our courses are tailored
towards CSIs.
They're not tailored towardsfire investigators from the fire
services, which is what a lotof fire investigation courses
are tailored to.
You could say that CSIs werestruggling.
Csis were struggling to knowwhat to do with a fire scene.
So some of that struggle is youturn up to a fire and it's a
(08:33):
big black mess and you justthrow everything towards the
fire investigation just the fire, the origin and the cause,
forgetting that actually themost important thing you as a
CSI can do is work out whetheror not there's a potential
offender and whether or notthere's any link to an offender.
So our courses, our CSI courses, really focus on the fact that
(08:54):
just because it's a fire doesn'tstop you being a CSI, and
that's where the focus is.
Obviously, we have a fewdifferent courses, but the ones
that most people have been onare a five-day course or a
two-day course.
Five-day has quite a lot oftheory.
It tends to be for people whoare a bit new.
They need that informationbefore you can chuck them into a
burnt room and let theminvestigate it.
(09:15):
So on the five-day course, we doone day of practical.
We burn the rooms and they'regiven a scenario and they get to
investigate and examine andexcavate.
They photograph it and then thefollowing day they do a full
debrief with us and go througheverything that they found and
what they think now in thoserooms.
We don't just burn them, wealso put the physical evidence
(09:35):
that the CSI might be lookingfor in a normal scene and
they're aware that we've donethat.
We don't do anything sneaky, weput it in there.
We tell them that we put thingsin there.
But I think in reality thethings that people mostly enjoy
on our courses is when we do theboil over demonstration and
they get to sit underneath theflames rolling over their head
(09:56):
or they get to throw petrolbombs and that sort of thing.
That's the things that theyreally like on that five day
course, because who doesn't likea bit of fire?
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, exactly on that five-day course, because who
doesn't like a bit of fire?
Yeah, exactly.
I think the one thing that withcsis is that people do believe
that fire destroys all types ofevidence and obviously it
creates its own evidence.
And I used to do a bit atcramfield and I would put blood
and fingerprints in scenes anddeliberately make sure that
there was an opportunity therefrom protection etc.
That's the sort of thing thatyou do on that course.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
So that's the sort of thing that we do.
On that course, we make it asrealistic as possible by way of
that evidence.
So obviously we will put somethings in that we know are going
to disappear.
We video the scenes before weburn them, so you get to see
exactly what it was like, youget to see what has happened to
it since and you get to seewhere all of that evidence was.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So you'll get an idea of where you may expect things
to survive and where they mightnot fantastic and we would still
test, for I've done some bitsabout around blood and even with
the burn patterns etc.
Etc.
You can still see distributionmarks on the blood and bits and
pieces like that.
So I think your course isreally important and, as you
said, you tailor them towardsthe CSI, because there is this
(11:06):
fallacy.
I think that a fire destroysthings and it's really important
for CSIs to realize, as youjust said, just be a CSI,
process it as you would, thinkabout the opportunities, as you
would if there hadn't been afire.
But I think there's twodifferent types of CSIs and
they're in the Marmite camp.
You either love it or you hateit.
It and I think about 80% hateit.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I don't know what you think honestly I don't think
you're far wrong.
I think it takes a special kindof person to enjoy your fire
scene.
It's they're dark and they'redirty and they smell bad and you
can't do several in a day.
It's a one a day type of thing.
It might take you several daysto do it and that could be just
an ordinary fire.
But the problem for a CSI isthat sometimes they're used to
(11:47):
going out to several jobs a dayand they're just dealt with and
they're done, and especially ifthey have any metrics that
they're measured by, then thewhole you don't find evidence
and fire scenes comes into thatas well.
That's a reason a lot of themdon't like going to them,
because they don't get theiridents and everything,
everything else.
But our course is even more fun.
So our two-day course wasoriginally designed a few years
(12:08):
ago but has gotten a lot ofpopularity recently.
It's slightly different.
There is no theory as such.
We teach the theory through thepractical.
So you have to have done acourse with the theory before
ours or somebody else's.
It doesn't matter if it's afire service college or anybody
else.
As long as you've got thattheory somewhere in your head,
then we use the practical tobring it out.
(12:29):
But we do it a bit differently.
We split them into two groups,two groups of three.
One team goes up and does a bitof a vr scene.
So we use the river system.
So they each take a turn to gointo a scene, investigate it,
pull out evidence, look forthings, come up with origin and
cause and we use that toreinforce their previous theory
(12:51):
knowledge and bring out thethings that they've forgotten
mostly.
And while they're doing that,the other team is outside
building a room.
So we have the students buildthe room, design the scenario
and determine where we're goingto set the fire.
So then they get to see thefire develop from the
application of the flame, forexample.
(13:11):
They get to see that firedevelopment and then watch it be
extinguished and see theaftermath in person from what
they designed.
So they get to learn a bit moreabout things like vertical
fuels and if you'd set more thanone fire in a room, if you set
it in a corner away from anyoxygen, that it's essentially
not going to do very much andyou might never see it post fire
(13:32):
.
So they get to learn a littlebit more by doing that
practically than they would dojust by us burning it.
But you've got to have a littlebit while you don't get a
decent fire, sure, yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:43):
and yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
And then the following day they switch scenes
, because obviously each groupdoes both things and they
investigate each other's scenes.
Nice, that's good yeah and Ihave to say that we put the CSI,
the blood and the fingerprintevidence in there.
Csis are mean to each other.
Those are mean Honestly.
They hide evidence in places.
I would never even consider it.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Nice, nice in places I would never even consider it
Nice nice.
I think that says a bit aboutthe psyche of CSI.
Emma, I want to move on to sortof you obviously predominantly
do a lot of fatal work.
Now I don't know, I don't wantto put words in your mouth, but
you are much more prosecutionkind of.
You do a lot more work for thepolice.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, we do a lot more work for the police than we
do with the defence.
So our split of work isprobably 30, 70 percentage, so
it's not 50, 50.
It's definitely more towardsthe police than it is towards
defence, but in terms of casenumbers that's probably where it
sits.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
And the only reason I really mentioned that is that,
obviously, in the private sector, if you'd said to some of my
colleagues in the private sector, well, you're going to a post
mortem tomorrow for fire, theywould freak out, completely
freak out.
So just tell us a little bitmore about your expertise and
about what you can do with abody and what you look for in a
body in a post-mortem, and thenmaybe we can move on to some
clothing examples, et cetera, etcetera.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So we deal a lot with fatalities and the big thing
for us as fire investigators isthat initially we like them to
stay in the scene.
So as a fire scientist, I wantto see the fatality in the scene
if at all possible.
If they've been removed becausethere was a chance of recovery,
then absolutely I understandthat.
That's why they're no longerthere.
But if there's not and for themost part the fire crews are
(15:16):
really good at recognising thatand leaving them in situ because
they form part of thatinformation for us.
If you've removed that piece ofthe jigsaw, you'll never see
the hole.
You need to see how that bodyhas interacted with that fire,
where the patterns are on thebody, whether or not they are a
potential mechanism of firespread, whether or not they've
had an effect on the fire.
(15:38):
So for us it's really importantto be able to see what it is
they brought to that picture.
That's the first thing.
First and foremost is they areimportant.
Being there and seeing them insitu is important when we're
there.
As a scientist, I would lookfor the patterns of damage to
(15:58):
the body and how that relates tothe rest of the patterns of
burning in the room.
Neither should be looked at inisolation if at all possible.
Obviously, it's not alwayspossible, but having that
overview is really helpful.
Once they're removed, we canroll them over and have a look
at the different patterns ofburning that they might be.
We might be looking for someevidence that they had a healing
(16:20):
reaction, like blistering,which would indicate that they
were alive for a part of thefire's duration.
We might be looking forevidence of contact or
protection marks where they mayhave been lying on the floor or
against a furniture item to giveus that indication of whether
or not they were collapsed at anearly stage of the fire.
(16:40):
Whether or not there was smokestaining underneath them then
becomes important as to whetheror not they could have been
moving around.
Once all of that is done at ascene, we then would help the
CSI in the packaging, whichmight include head, hands and
feet and everything else, allbeing nicely wrapped up and
nicely protected in order to betaken away Then at the mortuary.
(17:02):
It would depend on the job, butwe would only choose to go to a
mortuary or look to be at themortuary if we were going to add
something about it, because ifthe body's been taken away
before we've got there, we willabsolutely be at the post-mortem
because we haven't seen it yet.
If we've seen the body in situand we've recovered the clothing
and we've made sure that anysamples that might have been on
(17:25):
or under them have been properlysampled and we've seen the
patterns of burning, then wewouldn't be looking to go to
post-mortem because it wouldn'tbe necessary for us to.
It would just be an extraperson in the room that
ultimately the deceased doesn'tneed us to be standing there
looking at that.
That's not appropriate so wewouldn't do it under those
circumstances.
But at the post-mortem we wouldbe looking to do largely what we
(17:48):
would normally do at a scenewhen the body's in situ.
So we'd be looking for thepatterns of burning, any
blistering or heat damage, smokestaining.
So we'd be looking for thepatterns of burning, any
blistering or heat damage, smokestaining, remains of fabric or
clothing or anything like thatto give us an idea of what the
person was wearing.
Obviously we'd be looking attaking any samples from that as
well, from the clothing.
One of the other things that wedo is, or we can do, is we
(18:10):
often advise that if we think anignitable liquid has been used
at the scene.
We would advise that sectionsof the lung are taken for sample
because they can be analysed todetermine whether or not the
person was breathing petrol atthe time of the fire.
Obviously, sometimes it can gointo your stomach contents as
well.
So those are all samples thatwe would be there to sort of
(18:30):
advise if it was necessary totake.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
But that's our role at the post-mortem really is
advising and taking theinformation about the patterns
of damage to that body Ilistened to another podcast of
you I think it was called theburning man that you're on and
it was a while ago.
But you put into some realuseful about the context of that
body and where that body andany burning outside and I kind
(18:54):
of stress that when I do a bitof training is I always look at
the context of where, becausethat can tell you a great deal.
Just take it remember.
I don't know if you rememberwell, you obviously will
remember it, but just takethrough that scenario where I
thought you got that pointreally well across, where the
body was in situ but there wasevidence around it.
And I think csis can sometimesbecome, particularly with fire
(19:14):
and I don't know why, butparticularly if I fire become a
bit more tunnel vision oncertain things.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah, if it's a fatality, people tend to focus
on the body initially,especially if the body is the
focus of the fire and theyforget to look around it,
because the whole idea ofanything to do with this, if you
think archaeologically, it'sall about context, it's all
about what it means witheverything else around it.
Nothing is acting in isolation.
So with a fatality,specifically a body that is
(19:42):
burnt, rather than a body in aburnt room, if we're a body that
burned, we would need to belooking around that body to
determine whether or not therewas burning to any surrounding
items, like foliage, any itemsthat had been dropped as
somebody had moved.
For example, if somebody hasbeen ignited or ignited
themselves with something likepetrol, then they will tend to
(20:03):
move, they will tend to run, butin that process they will drop,
or drops of their clothing orsections of their clothing will
drop off them and that will giveyou an idea of the route that
somebody has travelled and alsothe base of somebody's shoes,
that you can often find littlemelted patches in the base of
(20:23):
somebody's shoes if they've beenupright and running over the
bits of fabric that have fallenoff them when they've been hot.
There's information out thereto be found.
You just have to look for it.
I've had several similarexperiences where we've had
scenes that have beeninvestigated by crime scene
investigator, by local fireinvestigator, and then sometime
(20:46):
later sometimes a matter ofthree weeks, something like that
I've been called in as a firescientist to review it because
something has come up in thepost-mortem that suggests that
this is not the accident.
Everybody initially thought itwas, and when that happens,
usually the giveaway to it notbeing an accident is a CSI job.
It's blood on the walls, it'sfootwear marks in the suit, it's
(21:09):
tool marks in the doorways andthe windows or even simple
things like fingerprints onlighter fluid tins and that sort
of things.
It is often, I find, the normalCSI work that has just for some
reason been forgotten.
And I know that blood looksdifferent in fires.
After fires it looks differentand if you're not used to seeing
it it can be really hard tospot.
(21:31):
You can think it's somethingelse.
It's brown and horrible.
It doesn't look like bloodanymore.
I get that.
That's why we put it in ourscenes in our training.
But if you don't do your csijob and you just focus in on the
fire, you miss all of thatsurrounding information, then
you're going to lose the meaningof the fire yeah, and I think
(21:51):
you've hit it head on.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
There's a sense of, as I've sort of said already I
think, csiis when it's a firethey go okay, we're looking for
the origin of the cause and theyforget about the fibres, they
forget about the footwear marks,they forget about the blood,
etc.
Etc.
So I think that's a message fortoday is you treat it like you
would any other scene?
It just so happens that there'sbeen a fire there as well,
(22:14):
absolutely.
But I've had presumptive bloodtests comes back as positives on
areas of blood that I wouldnever, ever have thought would
still come back with positivesand bits and pieces.
I know there's a bit ofresearch trying to take place
around still trying to get dnaprofiles from that kind of stuff
.
So you touched on clothingthere.
Emma.
You're one of only few peoplethat I know in the UK that can
(22:34):
sort of comment and have gotsome expertise on clothing, in
particular in flash burns, inrelation to whether people are
in close proximity to flashburns.
So can you just take us throughthat for the audience.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Flash burns.
If you're a medicalprofessional you think of that
as sort of the skin gets a bitred because you've had brief
exposure to a fire.
For us, as fire scientists, wetalk about flash burning.
We really mean to the clothing,we mean that somebody has been
in the presence of a vapor cloud, ignition, somebody's poured
petrol or spilt petrol or asimilarly volatile liquid.
(23:08):
It's got to be volatile,otherwise you can't get that
nice big cloud, a nice big cloudbuilding up above it.
It's ignited with a flame or aspark and the person is in or at
the edge of that cloud.
Their clothing will get veryslightly scorched or heat
affected so it could melt,depending on what it is, but it
(23:28):
might be invisible to the nakedeye.
Sometimes it can be gross andyou get really like puckering to
, especially sort of some of thevery cheap synthetic things and
the very thin syntheticanything that says don't stand
near a fire, so stay away fromnaked sources of flame.
That will pucker rather thanjust superficially melt and
scorch.
But if it's superficiallymelted, the wearer may not be
(23:50):
aware of it.
They may think they've gottenaway with it with some slightly
shorter eyebrows.
But in those cases if theclothing is taken as exhibits
and submitted.
They can be examined under amicroscope and we can find the
melted fiber ends or thescorching or the shortening of
the fibers on things like cotton, and that's great.
(24:13):
But obviously there are otherthings to take into
consideration.
If somebody is a smoker, thenthey may actually often have
scorches around their cuff fromwhere they're lighting their
cigarette behind their hand andthe lighter comes into contact
with the cuff.
Somebody might have a hob, agas hob that clears up sometimes
, and it sometimes flashes upand affects your cuff and also
manufacturing damage.
(24:33):
The manufacturing processesoften flame wash garments in
order to make them nice andsmooth and look all shiny and
new.
That's all fine.
We can differentiate betweenthose using the patterns.
So what we look for is thedistribution of any fire damage
or melting or scorching acrossthe garments, across the whole
(24:54):
outfit, if we can, and then wecan put that in the context of
whether or not it'smanufacturer's damage, exposure
to an overly hot tumble dryer,or whether or not it's exposure
to something like flash burning.
It is not just about onegarment on its own, with a
little bit of singeing to thecuff does not make flash burning
.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Sure, and I think and it's about, as you say, put put
it in context, like if suspector saying that I had my back to
the fire when it was ignitedyou'd be looking to see if that
correlates with some of theflash burn.
I remember the last job thatyou and I actually worked on.
I don't know if you remember it, but the victim was removed and
there was a lot of cigarettes.
I don't know if you went, wewent through the drawer and
there was a lot of cigarettes.
I don't know if you wentthrough the drawer and there was
her pyjamas and she hadcigarette burns all over her
(25:37):
pyjamas where she wasintoxicated and kept burning
herself.
And so again, just about thecontext and I had another job in
Glasgow as well about thecontext of those ignitable
liquids.
It's really important tounderstand do they have a
legitimate reason for beingthere or not, because there are
ignitable liquids all around thehouse.
Really, I mean, if you find apetrol can in the middle of the
front room, then yeah, I mean,you see that you questions need
(26:01):
to be asked most of us wouldn'thave a petrol can in the middle
of the front room.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
But I can guarantee you that I have had jobs in the
past where somebody said well,that petrol can's just there for
me to use the petrol as asolvent to clean these motorbike
parts, for example yeah andthat for them was a completely
normal thing, which would havebeen absolutely.
I'm not having an open can ofpetrol in my house.
It's crazy, but for some peopleit's normal and that's a big
thing.
(26:24):
With all of our jobs, CSIs andfire scientists, what we
consider normal, we can't carryinto our scenes.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, exactly Every CSI will tell you when they
first start the job.
I can't believe this is howpeople live and you've seen it,
and CSI see it on a regularbasis.
Like this is how peopleactually live, and whether
that's highly cleanly, orwhether it's hoarders, or
whether it's drug takers, etcetera, et cetera, then you
definitely do see some oddthings and you have to put that
in context.
You have to understand thatFantastic.
(26:55):
Is there one job, Emma, thatyou think that's really impacted
upon you or you really learnedsome lessons from?
Is there a particular harrowingcase that you can speak of?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I think every case teaches you something.
The minute you think you knowit all, you're in all sorts of
trouble.
There are so many cases where Ihave learned things over the
years.
I've been doing this for 19years now.
It's been a long time thereover the years.
I've been doing this for 19years now it's been a long time.
There are things that you learnwhen you're first starting and
there are things that you learnas you move through your career
and when you first start thatlearning curve is steep, really
(27:24):
steep.
As you move on it sort oflevels off a bit, but every now
and then there's a little sortof peak in your learning because
something new happens,something new comes along.
For me, one of the things thatcame along in my career has been
lithium-ion batteries.
They were around and then theywere and now they're everywhere.
It's something that we all hadto learn about.
We spent a lot of time makingsure that people know that
(27:45):
through sort of training withthe UKFI and that sort of thing.
As far as individual cases go,there will always be cases that
I will remember, for good andbad reasons, some of them
because I never worked out whatcaused it and part of me wonders
whether or not I should havebeen able to, because that's
(28:05):
just the way we work.
I might have been brought inlater.
I've done quite a lot of reviewsand, starting with Prometheus,
we do quite a lot of reviews.
So we're on the NCA, we're ontheir database, their scientific
database.
So we often get a lot ofreviews.
So we're on the NCE, we're ontheir database, their scientific
database.
So we often get a phone call tosay could you review this job
for us and let us know ifthere's anything else that could
be done?
Now, in those situationssometimes we turn around and say
(28:29):
I think, honestly, you arewhere you are, there's nothing
more that we can do.
And other times we don't seethat.
Other times we work on the case, we do extra work, we do
ignition tests, we do proof ofconcept ignition tests more than
anything else.
So we're not doing fullreconstructions, because you
cannot fully reconstruct a fireto be exactly the same as the
(28:51):
incident was.
You just can't do it.
But we'll do small scaleignition tests and proof of
concept tests and we'll revieweverything and we'll write a
report.
And a couple of the ones that Iremember most are those kind of
reviews where I haven't been tothe scene, so you're already a
little bit on the back foot.
But through doing all of thatsort of extra work, it is extra
(29:13):
work.
It is hard.
It is hard to review jobs onpaper and through photographs,
it is hard.
But through doing that andgiving evidence in court on
those jobs, you see the justicethat needed to be done, that was
delayed for whatever reason inthe first instance and might
have taken sort of three years,when normally you would expect
(29:35):
it to take six to 12 months toget to court.
And those are the ones that Ithink about most, where I'm just
I have been part of the machineand the machine has worked for
a change.
I mean.
By the same token I can talkabout defence cases where,
similarly, the prosecution hasbeen certain this person has
done a thing, but then, whenI've reviewed it as a scientist,
(29:55):
there really hasn't been theevidence for it.
It's been more of a case ofunfortunate circumstances than
it has anything else.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
When those things are all pointed out, then you don't
have your D in court anymorebut nobody's in prison and then
they shouldn't be.
I was talking the last podcast,actually, with David.
We were talking about cognitivebias and I always thought when
I first started in 1999 as a CSI, the police must be right.
But they're not always rightand I think as I've got older
and mature and I've seen some ofthe things that have happened.
It's very rarely malicious,it's often just miscommunication
(30:30):
or not looking at the rightarea or that tunnel vision or
cognitive bias that leads people.
And Peter Mancy had one recentlywhich he sort of put on
LinkedIn and very obvious itwasn't a deliberate fire, but
you wonder how it got to thatstage.
You wonder how it got to thatpoint where it needed someone.
It took until the defense.
But I guess, as we were talkinglast week, was that you are
(30:51):
that last sort of checks andbalances in the last defense, if
you like.
But yeah, we should talk aboutyou are ex-president, you are
you the president after?
Yeah, okay, talk me through,ukfi so the ukfi.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
I'm sure pete mancy will have talked about this with
you and die also maybe die isthe president.
I am past president and onceyou've been a president you are
always a past president.
I was president a couple ofyears ago, so not long after the
pandemic.
I was the president at the timeof the reopening of the
conferences.
It was an interesting timebeing.
(31:27):
During that.
We had to postpone our annualtraining conference, our winter
conference that year, becauseCovid was ripping around again
and I happened to get Covid onthe date that the conference was
meant to be.
So I'm quite glad we didpostpone that.
So I did the AJM, the annualgeneral meeting with COVID.
I felt atrocious.
I've no idea if I covered allthe points I was meant to.
(31:47):
We got through it.
So I started with the UKFI along time ago.
I was still at the FSS when Istarted going to UKFI meetings.
It's quite handy because withthe LFB, with Pete being along
the road, a lot of the meetingswere just up the road so I could
just pop along there and it wasnice and easy.
I joined the board in 2015.
First I was co -operated on andthen elected on the following
(32:09):
year.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
And you're still the editor, aren't you the editor of
the journal?
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yes, I'm still the editor of the journal.
I'm no longer dealing with thesocial media.
Lauren is now dealing with that, so it took a while to find
somebody who would take thesocial media off my hands Mainly
, I think, because we do so.
It has an Instagram page,facebook and X I suppose it's
called now rather than Twitterand X Apparently, generationally
(32:34):
.
It's quite difficult to findsomebody who can deal with all
three of those.
Lauren has taken it on, so I'mquite glad about that.
But I am still editor of thejournal and just before this
conversation today, I wasputting the finishing touches to
the next journal.
I've just sent it off to beprinted.
We've got two really goodarticles in that.
We are always looking forarticles.
We won't just publish anythingif you send me something and I
(32:56):
send you an email back sayingthank you very much for your
efforts, but it it's just that,for whatever reason, it's not
going to fit in with the journal.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I should say you're an award winning journal as well
.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
So, whilst I choose the articles and put it all
together, we have a peer reviewsystem.
Every article that's sent init's put through the peer review
system, which means that twomembers of the board have to
okay a journal for publication.
If the two reviewers who do itone of them sees it's close but
not quite there, we might sendit back for rewrite, but we
won't publish it if it's notgood enough.
And I think that process, alongwith some of the jazzier
graphics and things that we'veput on it, those things have
made it a nicer read.
It's a nice, glossy magazine.
It turns up on your doorstep,which is always a good thing.
(33:55):
Obviously, we have electronicversions of it, so if you want
to read it on the website andthen it's always going to be
available there as a sort of anarchive.
But yeah, it has won two IWAIInternational Association of
Arts and Investigatorspublication awards yeah, it's
got credible stuff in it.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
So, yeah, I really look forward to my getting mine.
We should mention as well I'lllet you mention it about the
upcoming conference.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yes, so we do two conferences a year and the
summer conference is coming upon the 1st of July, so it's
always the first Monday in Julyfor the summer conference.
This one is a bit different.
So this one we have smallernumbers so we don't have as many
places available, but it isn'ta sitting in a lecture hall
being talked at conference.
It is a workshop basedconference.
(34:41):
So it's much more practical andfor most of UK EFI members we
are practical learners, we likedoing things.
It's all well and good to sitthere and have the words spoken
at you, but it's much better toget your hands dirty.
That is what this conference is.
We've been working since I waspresident, because it's been in
the works for a long time and wefinally finally found a way to
(35:03):
actually make it work.
But yeah, it should befantastic.
Unfortunately, due to aconvergence of courts, training
courses and on call, I won't beable to be there, so I'll have
to have somebody else tell meall about it yeah, well, I'm
exactly the same.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
I booked it and I can't go either now.
So, unfortunately, because ofsome annual leave bits and
pieces in Saudi, but yeah, Ican't go either.
So I'm going to get someone togo in my place and tell me all
about it.
But that should be good.
It should be good, and it's asyou say.
I think the cheaper rate isprobably gone past now, but it's
still a be a round robin thingand it's going to be really
(35:35):
really good.
I think it's really good.
So, all right, listen, I'm abit of a gadget man.
Is there a piece of kit orequipment that you think that
you can't do without?
I sometimes ask this questionis there a bit of kit or
equipment that you think, oh, Ican't do without that?
Speaker 2 (35:48):
see, the thing is you can this job with mostly with
what's in your brain.
That's where most of this isyour typical little bits of
tools, your trowels and all thatsort of stuff.
But if you had to have a gadgetyou're asking us for a gadget
gadget then I would have to saythe pid.
The pid has been really useful.
We all have one on our vans, soit's a photoionization detector
(36:10):
.
For those of you that don'tknow what a pid is, but it's a
little handheld device.
We do it.
We talk in acronyms all the timeand we assume the other person
knows I know you do, butsomebody else might not and it's
a little handheld device andit's basically a little sniffer
and it can help you locate whereyour better flammable liquid
sample might be.
I've used it on jobs where I'vehad a fire at a front door and
(36:33):
there's nothing left with thefront door, so I'm not going to
be able to take any of that as asample.
And I've taken the flagstonesup at the base of the front door
and used the PID to work outwhich section of the sand or
soil is going to be better totake.
And it works really well.
It is different to a dog.
A dog can search a wide area ina much shorter time and can
give you a really good hitwithin that context.
(36:54):
But sometimes when it's areally strong smell, the dog can
get a bit turned around becausethey're following those vapor
clouds and if the vapor cloudsare converging and mixing they
start to really struggle withthat, whereas the pig doesn't
follow a vapor cloud in the sameway.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
So the pig only detects what you're pointing its
nose at yeah, the dogs can getif it's outdoors and it's windy
day as well.
That can affect, obviously,whether they're zoning down
their targeting etc.
One question I want to ask you,because are you seeing much?
I mean 3d scanning and all thatkind of stuff is very current
at this moment time.
Is that something you'relooking into?
Is that something that thepolice forces, csis, are
(37:30):
starting to do for you, orwhat's the sort of rep on that?
Speaker 2 (37:33):
no csi is offered to do that for me, but we are
looking at doing it ourselves.
So we've started trialing apiece of equipment to see if
it's workable in the context ofwhat we do and at the moment it
looks pretty good.
A bit of LIDAR, it looks prettygood and I think it would be
really useful for courts to beable to do that.
10-15 years ago I used to seeit to police.
(37:55):
By all means, do a 3D plan andyou can blow it up and zoom in
on bits.
It only has in it what you putin it, whereas with these scans
it's what was there.
And as long as you take themproperly and take them slowly
and get all of the data points,then it can be fantastic.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, I think it's going to complement I sense,
certainly in my area that I'mcurrently in.
I sense that they're pushing itand it's almost going to
replace I can never see itreplacing photography or your
notes or anything else.
I think it's a fantastic tool,more for when it gets to court
and you can actually go back, ineffect, put a pair of goggles
on and walk through the sceneagain and show in the whole
(38:32):
context as a homogenous kind ofapproach, rather than because I
found that when I want to getright down into the detail of it
, it's only really going to be aphotograph that's going to give
me the level of definition thatI want.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Well, also because a fire is removed, you're removing
debris.
You're removing that loosedebris.
Are you going to take a lidarscan?
Every shovel full, every 10shovel fulls?
When do you do it at thebeginning, do you do it the end?
What about all of those thingsthat green in the debris?
They've all still got to berecorded, and photography is the
best way, definitely.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
You get your context as you go down.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
What does that mean?
The European Network ofForensic Science Institutes?
Yeah, MCA.
They had their meeting in Dundeelast month.
They had the German Institutedemonstrate essentially a full
VR suit where their investigatorwould be able to go into the VR
room and interact with them ina way that we can move things
(39:26):
around with a bit of LiDARscanning, but not to the same
extent as they can do.
But I think that is the realityof a national institution,
compared to the England andWales model, which is
essentially private companies.
The budget just isn't there tocover that and the police budget
gets split over severalorganisations.
(39:47):
None of those individualorganisations have enough to
push into that sort of research,but they also, because they're
all competitors, can't cometogether to push that research
through necessarily.
So yeah, so that's all a bit inTrangland and Wales.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
I'll give you a hot potato.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Especially being a former.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
FSS, exactly, exactly what I'm going to ask you now.
So good old days of FSS, orstay private.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
I think either forensic service that is
available to anybody who wantsto use it.
I think forensic service thatis available to anybody who
wants to use it.
I think the issue with puttinga cost and a payment method on
forensic services does everybodydetriment.
By everybody I don't just meanthe police, who obviously have
to pay for services, I also meandefendants with legal aid.
(40:33):
If you don't have the money,how do you afford a proper
defense, and I mean it foreverybody.
I think putting pound signs infront of something puts it to
detriment.
So from a justice point of view,I don't think it's a good thing
to have a fully private.
From a personal point of view,I have more freedom now than I
could do criminal um insurancework.
I can work for a privateindividual on a job where they
(40:56):
just don't understand what'shappened in their house and I
can make those decisions.
And for me that makes me a morerounded investigator.
So I am better at my job nowthan I was when I was back in
the FSS.
Yeah, yeah, that's probably thefairest take I can give.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
I like that.
I mean, I'm very jealous ofyour time in the FSS because, as
I said, when I was there, itwas this epitome of where you
wanted to get.
You were only invited really tosort of apply, but the amount
of experience you had in thattime and the interesting jobs
you must have got involved inwould be a fantastic
apprenticeship or training foranybody.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
So I'd only just been a fire investigator for so I'd
only been with the FIU for two.
I'd only been out on my own for18 months when I investigated
Lackanell House.
But it was a vigorous trainingprocess and I'd been exposed to
so many fires it was completelyexpected that you would be able
to handle it and deal with it,and I worked with an awful lot
(41:51):
of people on that job that Istill see now.
Pete Mancy was there as well,and it was probably at that time
the biggest job that I've everbeen involved in.
And it was quite daunting tohave the phone call as you're
driving home from the lab to sayhave you seen the news?
When that's the phrase that theon-call coordinator opens with
you know you're in trouble.
So that was probably at the time.
(42:11):
It was a really longinvestigation, involved a lot of
lab work and worked with NickCarey as well.
Looking at the electrical stuff.
I think I wrote the finalreport in something like 2013.
So when I was at Prometheus,that's how long it took to
finally get through to sort ofbeing at Inquest.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Fantastic, I mean.
Thanks ever so much.
We're sort of unfortunately, aswe always do, emma, we're
running out of time, but thanksever so much for coming on.
I really appreciate it.
And again, prometheus for meeveryone if you're in the CSI
world, everyone knows Prometheus, and long may that continue,
from fantastic training and bitsand pieces, and everyone raves
about your training.
So if there are any forces outthere want some training, then
(42:51):
contact Prometheus.
You've got your website, etc.
I'll put all those details onthe podcast at the bottom.
But thanks again, emma, Ireally appreciate it thanks very
much for having us it's apleasure.
All right, thanks so much takecare hey, thank you for
listening to csi on fire.
Please don't forget to like,subscribe and suggest future
topics on our web page.
(43:12):
Remember factor non-verbal.
Take care, good hunting.
I hope to see you on the nextone.
Cheers.
Hi, welcome to CSI on Fire, the podcast that takes
you behind the scenes of thefire investigation community.
I'm your host, mike Moulden,and episode after episode, we'll
attempt to excavate the oftendifficult but always fascinating
world of the fire investigator.
Hi and welcome to CSI on Fire.
(00:26):
Just a very quick one before weactually start the episode.
This week this is episode 20for us, so that's fantastic.
I just wanted to give a shoutout to a couple of CPD
opportunities, which is the mainone for the UK Association of
Fire Investigation Summitconference coming up on the 1st
of july, that's in nottingham.
(00:47):
We're going to have a bit ofexciting news in relation to csi
on fire in regard to that.
Another one to give a shout outto a couple of podcasts in
focus fire investigation withthe great scott coleman and
chastity owens really, reallyinteresting every couple of
weeks just started off I thinkthey're on episode four or
episode five, but yeah, givethat a listen.
(01:07):
Fantastic, really interesting,lovely dynamic between the two
of them, and they've startedgetting other guests in, really
knowledgeable guys and girls whoare then coming in and giving
some CPD.
I also want to give a shout outto Voucher, who actually got me
into podcasting the FireScience Show.
So if you're particularlyinterested in fire protection
and the other end of fireinvestigation before what should
(01:30):
be there, what shouldn't bethere give Voucher's podcast a
look at.
It's really interesting.
It's got some great guests onthere, some really big names in
the fire investigation and fireprotection world, and he's just
reached his third yearanniversary.
So congratulations to you.
And finally, firebug is a greatpodcast.
It's a case study of john orr.
I won't go too much into thatbut I won't spoil the podcast.
(01:53):
But it's about a fireinvestigator and how he
investigate, goes about fires,and it's got a bit of a twist at
the end.
It's a real story, true story,and it's one that certainly got
me into podcasting and listeningto podcasts.
So give that a recommend aswell.
That's firebug.
A couple of other cpd thingsdon't forget cfi trainer.
Uh, part of the iaai.
I've got various different bitsand pieces you can go on to and
(02:15):
do some.
They've got a great brand newone on in relation to duck fires
, kitchen fires, duck firesequipment and that kind of stuff
.
And also I wanted to give ashout out to Dakari.
If you look in Dakari, theyhave got a number of fantastic
webinars and I've been goingthrough a few of those.
Actually, you get a certificateat the end of it, so it adds to
CPD.
(02:36):
So, yeah, thoroughly recommendDakari as well.
If you just type in GoogleDakari, d-c-a-r-i, they've got a
series of webinars, all by verycredible, well-known people in
the fire investigation community.
So yeah, that's it.
Just give it a quick shout outfor some of my colleagues and
some of the other trainingopportunities out there in the
world.
If guests or if podcasters,listeners, have got any other
(02:59):
suggestions, then please justsend us an email wwwcsonfirecom
and we'll stick them on as thiskind of new section.
Okay, on with the show.
Okay, so welcome to CSI on FireFire Investigation Podcast.
I've got a fantastic guest ontoday.
I've been after Emma for quitesome time but she's a very busy
person and we'll get into that alittle bit later.
(03:20):
But Emma Wilson from Prometheus, thanks very much for coming on
the podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Thank you very much for having me, Mike.
I'm sorry it took so long tojoin up our diaries.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
That's all right.
I know that you're busy.
We very nearly got it.
I think it was last week andyou got called out.
So, emma, as I do for all ofour guests, just take us through
your history in fireinvestigation.
Take us from what inspired you,how you got into it right up to
the modern day, if you would.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Unlike a lot of fire investigators, I sort of fell
into it a little bit.
I did a bachelor's degree inmedical biochemistry and then I
did a master's degree inbiomolecular archaeology and
then I thought I should probablytry and get a job.
I applied for whatever work Icould get in forensics and I
ended up at the Forensic ScienceService down in London
Obviously quite a big move forme, being from the Northeast.
(04:07):
So I went down there and Istarted working in D&E All very
good work, all very boring, satin a lab type of stuff, though
Didn't really enjoy it that much.
I enjoyed people and it was agood job, just at university
sort of thing, but it wasn'twhat I wanted it to be for
forensics.
So then, good job, just at theuniversity sort of thing, but it
wasn't what I wanted it to befor forensics.
So then I moved to toxicology.
(04:27):
I even did a bit of drug workand then a job came up in fires.
I didn't even at the timerealize that the forensic
science service had a fireinvestigation unit, because they
were down a little corridorpast the canteen and nobody ever
went that way.
Everybody just turned into thecanteen.
So I applied for the job and Ihappened to get it, and that was
in 2005.
(04:48):
So I trained a bit in-house,mostly for those two years
started my very first trialinvestigation on my own was in
December 2007 in Kent and sincethen that's all I've done, just
investigated, investigated fires, done lab work around it as
well.
So the first bit of trainingwas in the lab work side of
(05:08):
stuff sort of GCMS, flammableliquid analysis, flash burning,
that sort of thing.
And then, as some people mightknow, the FSS shut in 2012.
So we were given about a year'snotice for redundancy, more or
less in the end.
So me and a couple of othersdecided to set up on our own.
There wasn't anybody elsereally looking to continue doing
(05:32):
fire investigation in the sameway.
Obviously there are lots ofother organizations out there.
There's the bigger forensiccompanies and there's your
insurance companies, who all dofire investigation but they
weren't looking to do it the waywe had been trained to do it.
A lot of them were looking formultidisciplinary and that
wasn't us.
We'd spent too long just doingfires.
It would have taken quite a lotto retrain us.
(05:54):
So we set up in 2012, january2012 to the 9th of January 2012
was our first working daysPrometheus, and we're still
going getting stronger andstronger.
We're still small, but we arelooking for more staff.
It's gone from strength tostrength and we're still here.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
You were at Lambeth, weren't you?
So I was at Lambeth as well.
But I always remember the fireinvestigation unit was where
there was a bit of mysteryaround it, because no one ever
got recruited as a fireinvestigator, did they?
It was always kind of you weretaken in if you were good enough
, and it was kind of like andI'm not blowing smoke, but it's
just always seen like, oh,they're almost like they're the
special ones, because the FSSnever advertised for a fire
(06:35):
investigator.
They were just sort of broughtin from other areas.
I remember my time, this kind ofmystique when I was at Lambeth.
I was only there for a veryshort time when I was at Lambeth
.
I was only there for a veryshort time, but when I was there
there was this kind of mystiquearound the fire investigation
unit.
But I think the thing as wellto say about the FSS was that
you'll obviously allude to itmore, but the FSS got involved
in all of the major fireinvestigations and all the
fatalities.
(06:55):
So you really got a massiveamount of experience there,
didn't you?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Oh yeah, the training criteria for a new fire
investigator was that you wereexpected to go out to at least
100 fires in your first year, or18 months or so, in order to be
signed off.
And that was without all of thelab work and looking at other
people's fires that they'd goneout to.
So there was a lot.
There were a lot of fires to goto.
We were called out to virtuallyeverything.
(07:21):
It was the full range, andthat's the thing that's
different now.
So back then, as a firescientist, you would get called
out to pretty much anything, butnow it's mostly when there's a
fatality, when there's a personabout to be arrested or when
they think it's linked tosomething else.
The criteria has definitelychanged.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, yeah, and you are.
Prometheus are pretty muchbased in most populated
southeast of the UK.
You do specialise.
You are kind of a little bit.
I mean, I know there are acouple of other providers out
there, but Prometheus if you'rea CSI within the UK pretty much
everyone knows Prometheus's name.
You and I have worked on acouple of jobs together and you
do training as well for CSIs.
Your training courses are wellknown.
Tell us a little bit more aboutyour training courses, because
(08:07):
every CSI that I speak to go oh,it's a great course.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So tell us a little bit why you think that's the
case.
So one of the big things for usis that our courses are tailored
towards CSIs.
They're not tailored towardsfire investigators from the fire
services, which is what a lotof fire investigation courses
are tailored to.
You could say that CSIs werestruggling.
Csis were struggling to knowwhat to do with a fire scene.
So some of that struggle is youturn up to a fire and it's a
(08:33):
big black mess and you justthrow everything towards the
fire investigation just the fire, the origin and the cause,
forgetting that actually themost important thing you as a
CSI can do is work out whetheror not there's a potential
offender and whether or notthere's any link to an offender.
So our courses, our CSI courses, really focus on the fact that
(08:54):
just because it's a fire doesn'tstop you being a CSI, and
that's where the focus is.
Obviously, we have a fewdifferent courses, but the ones
that most people have been onare a five-day course or a
two-day course.
Five-day has quite a lot oftheory.
It tends to be for people whoare a bit new.
They need that informationbefore you can chuck them into a
burnt room and let theminvestigate it.
(09:15):
So on the five-day course, we doone day of practical.
We burn the rooms and they'regiven a scenario and they get to
investigate and examine andexcavate.
They photograph it and then thefollowing day they do a full
debrief with us and go througheverything that they found and
what they think now in thoserooms.
We don't just burn them, wealso put the physical evidence
(09:35):
that the CSI might be lookingfor in a normal scene and
they're aware that we've donethat.
We don't do anything sneaky, weput it in there.
We tell them that we put thingsin there.
But I think in reality thethings that people mostly enjoy
on our courses is when we do theboil over demonstration and
they get to sit underneath theflames rolling over their head
(09:56):
or they get to throw petrolbombs and that sort of thing.
That's the things that theyreally like on that five day
course, because who doesn't likea bit of fire?
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, exactly on that five-day course, because who
doesn't like a bit of fire?
Yeah, exactly.
I think the one thing that withcsis is that people do believe
that fire destroys all types ofevidence and obviously it
creates its own evidence.
And I used to do a bit atcramfield and I would put blood
and fingerprints in scenes anddeliberately make sure that
there was an opportunity therefrom protection etc.
That's the sort of thing thatyou do on that course.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
So that's the sort of thing that we do.
On that course, we make it asrealistic as possible by way of
that evidence.
So obviously we will put somethings in that we know are going
to disappear.
We video the scenes before weburn them, so you get to see
exactly what it was like, youget to see what has happened to
it since and you get to seewhere all of that evidence was.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So you'll get an idea of where you may expect things
to survive and where they mightnot fantastic and we would still
test, for I've done some bitsabout around blood and even with
the burn patterns etc.
Etc.
You can still see distributionmarks on the blood and bits and
pieces like that.
So I think your course isreally important and, as you
said, you tailor them towardsthe CSI, because there is this
(11:06):
fallacy.
I think that a fire destroysthings and it's really important
for CSIs to realize, as youjust said, just be a CSI,
process it as you would, thinkabout the opportunities, as you
would if there hadn't been afire.
But I think there's twodifferent types of CSIs and
they're in the Marmite camp.
You either love it or you hateit.
It and I think about 80% hateit.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
I don't know what you think honestly I don't think
you're far wrong.
I think it takes a special kindof person to enjoy your fire
scene.
It's they're dark and they'redirty and they smell bad and you
can't do several in a day.
It's a one a day type of thing.
It might take you several daysto do it and that could be just
an ordinary fire.
But the problem for a CSI isthat sometimes they're used to
(11:47):
going out to several jobs a dayand they're just dealt with and
they're done, and especially ifthey have any metrics that
they're measured by, then thewhole you don't find evidence
and fire scenes comes into thatas well.
That's a reason a lot of themdon't like going to them,
because they don't get theiridents and everything,
everything else.
But our course is even more fun.
So our two-day course wasoriginally designed a few years
(12:08):
ago but has gotten a lot ofpopularity recently.
It's slightly different.
There is no theory as such.
We teach the theory through thepractical.
So you have to have done acourse with the theory before
ours or somebody else's.
It doesn't matter if it's afire service college or anybody
else.
As long as you've got thattheory somewhere in your head,
then we use the practical tobring it out.
(12:29):
But we do it a bit differently.
We split them into two groups,two groups of three.
One team goes up and does a bitof a vr scene.
So we use the river system.
So they each take a turn to gointo a scene, investigate it,
pull out evidence, look forthings, come up with origin and
cause and we use that toreinforce their previous theory
(12:51):
knowledge and bring out thethings that they've forgotten
mostly.
And while they're doing that,the other team is outside
building a room.
So we have the students buildthe room, design the scenario
and determine where we're goingto set the fire.
So then they get to see thefire develop from the
application of the flame, forexample.
(13:11):
They get to see that firedevelopment and then watch it be
extinguished and see theaftermath in person from what
they designed.
So they get to learn a bit moreabout things like vertical
fuels and if you'd set more thanone fire in a room, if you set
it in a corner away from anyoxygen, that it's essentially
not going to do very much andyou might never see it post fire
(13:32):
.
So they get to learn a littlebit more by doing that
practically than they would dojust by us burning it.
But you've got to have a littlebit while you don't get a
decent fire, sure, yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:43):
and yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
And then the following day they switch scenes
, because obviously each groupdoes both things and they
investigate each other's scenes.
Nice, that's good yeah and Ihave to say that we put the CSI,
the blood and the fingerprintevidence in there.
Csis are mean to each other.
Those are mean Honestly.
They hide evidence in places.
I would never even consider it.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Nice, nice in places I would never even consider it
Nice nice.
I think that says a bit aboutthe psyche of CSI.
Emma, I want to move on to sortof you obviously predominantly
do a lot of fatal work.
Now I don't know, I don't wantto put words in your mouth, but
you are much more prosecutionkind of.
You do a lot more work for thepolice.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, we do a lot more work for the police than we
do with the defence.
So our split of work isprobably 30, 70 percentage, so
it's not 50, 50.
It's definitely more towardsthe police than it is towards
defence, but in terms of casenumbers that's probably where it
sits.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
And the only reason I really mentioned that is that,
obviously, in the private sector, if you'd said to some of my
colleagues in the private sector, well, you're going to a post
mortem tomorrow for fire, theywould freak out, completely
freak out.
So just tell us a little bitmore about your expertise and
about what you can do with abody and what you look for in a
body in a post-mortem, and thenmaybe we can move on to some
clothing examples, et cetera, etcetera.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So we deal a lot with fatalities and the big thing
for us as fire investigators isthat initially we like them to
stay in the scene.
So as a fire scientist, I wantto see the fatality in the scene
if at all possible.
If they've been removed becausethere was a chance of recovery,
then absolutely I understandthat.
That's why they're no longerthere.
But if there's not and for themost part the fire crews are
(15:16):
really good at recognising thatand leaving them in situ because
they form part of thatinformation for us.
If you've removed that piece ofthe jigsaw, you'll never see
the hole.
You need to see how that bodyhas interacted with that fire,
where the patterns are on thebody, whether or not they are a
potential mechanism of firespread, whether or not they've
had an effect on the fire.
(15:38):
So for us it's really importantto be able to see what it is
they brought to that picture.
That's the first thing.
First and foremost is they areimportant.
Being there and seeing them insitu is important when we're
there.
As a scientist, I would lookfor the patterns of damage to
(15:58):
the body and how that relates tothe rest of the patterns of
burning in the room.
Neither should be looked at inisolation if at all possible.
Obviously, it's not alwayspossible, but having that
overview is really helpful.
Once they're removed, we canroll them over and have a look
at the different patterns ofburning that they might be.
We might be looking for someevidence that they had a healing
(16:20):
reaction, like blistering,which would indicate that they
were alive for a part of thefire's duration.
We might be looking forevidence of contact or
protection marks where they mayhave been lying on the floor or
against a furniture item to giveus that indication of whether
or not they were collapsed at anearly stage of the fire.
(16:40):
Whether or not there was smokestaining underneath them then
becomes important as to whetheror not they could have been
moving around.
Once all of that is done at ascene, we then would help the
CSI in the packaging, whichmight include head, hands and
feet and everything else, allbeing nicely wrapped up and
nicely protected in order to betaken away Then at the mortuary.
(17:02):
It would depend on the job, butwe would only choose to go to a
mortuary or look to be at themortuary if we were going to add
something about it, because ifthe body's been taken away
before we've got there, we willabsolutely be at the post-mortem
because we haven't seen it yet.
If we've seen the body in situand we've recovered the clothing
and we've made sure that anysamples that might have been on
(17:25):
or under them have been properlysampled and we've seen the
patterns of burning, then wewouldn't be looking to go to
post-mortem because it wouldn'tbe necessary for us to.
It would just be an extraperson in the room that
ultimately the deceased doesn'tneed us to be standing there
looking at that.
That's not appropriate so wewouldn't do it under those
circumstances.
But at the post-mortem we wouldbe looking to do largely what we
(17:48):
would normally do at a scenewhen the body's in situ.
So we'd be looking for thepatterns of burning, any
blistering or heat damage, smokestaining.
So we'd be looking for thepatterns of burning, any
blistering or heat damage, smokestaining, remains of fabric or
clothing or anything like thatto give us an idea of what the
person was wearing.
Obviously we'd be looking attaking any samples from that as
well, from the clothing.
One of the other things that wedo is, or we can do, is we
(18:10):
often advise that if we think anignitable liquid has been used
at the scene.
We would advise that sectionsof the lung are taken for sample
because they can be analysed todetermine whether or not the
person was breathing petrol atthe time of the fire.
Obviously, sometimes it can gointo your stomach contents as
well.
So those are all samples thatwe would be there to sort of
(18:30):
advise if it was necessary totake.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
But that's our role at the post-mortem really is
advising and taking theinformation about the patterns
of damage to that body Ilistened to another podcast of
you I think it was called theburning man that you're on and
it was a while ago.
But you put into some realuseful about the context of that
body and where that body andany burning outside and I kind
(18:54):
of stress that when I do a bitof training is I always look at
the context of where, becausethat can tell you a great deal.
Just take it remember.
I don't know if you rememberwell, you obviously will
remember it, but just takethrough that scenario where I
thought you got that pointreally well across, where the
body was in situ but there wasevidence around it.
And I think csis can sometimesbecome, particularly with fire
(19:14):
and I don't know why, butparticularly if I fire become a
bit more tunnel vision oncertain things.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah, if it's a fatality, people tend to focus
on the body initially,especially if the body is the
focus of the fire and theyforget to look around it,
because the whole idea ofanything to do with this, if you
think archaeologically, it'sall about context, it's all
about what it means witheverything else around it.
Nothing is acting in isolation.
So with a fatality,specifically a body that is
(19:42):
burnt, rather than a body in aburnt room, if we're a body that
burned, we would need to belooking around that body to
determine whether or not therewas burning to any surrounding
items, like foliage, any itemsthat had been dropped as
somebody had moved.
For example, if somebody hasbeen ignited or ignited
themselves with something likepetrol, then they will tend to
(20:03):
move, they will tend to run, butin that process they will drop,
or drops of their clothing orsections of their clothing will
drop off them and that will giveyou an idea of the route that
somebody has travelled and alsothe base of somebody's shoes,
that you can often find littlemelted patches in the base of
(20:23):
somebody's shoes if they've beenupright and running over the
bits of fabric that have fallenoff them when they've been hot.
There's information out thereto be found.
You just have to look for it.
I've had several similarexperiences where we've had
scenes that have beeninvestigated by crime scene
investigator, by local fireinvestigator, and then sometime
(20:46):
later sometimes a matter ofthree weeks, something like that
I've been called in as a firescientist to review it because
something has come up in thepost-mortem that suggests that
this is not the accident.
Everybody initially thought itwas, and when that happens,
usually the giveaway to it notbeing an accident is a CSI job.
It's blood on the walls, it'sfootwear marks in the suit, it's
(21:09):
tool marks in the doorways andthe windows or even simple
things like fingerprints onlighter fluid tins and that sort
of things.
It is often, I find, the normalCSI work that has just for some
reason been forgotten.
And I know that blood looksdifferent in fires.
After fires it looks differentand if you're not used to seeing
it it can be really hard tospot.
(21:31):
You can think it's somethingelse.
It's brown and horrible.
It doesn't look like bloodanymore.
I get that.
That's why we put it in ourscenes in our training.
But if you don't do your csijob and you just focus in on the
fire, you miss all of thatsurrounding information, then
you're going to lose the meaningof the fire yeah, and I think
(21:51):
you've hit it head on.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
There's a sense of, as I've sort of said already I
think, csiis when it's a firethey go okay, we're looking for
the origin of the cause and theyforget about the fibres, they
forget about the footwear marks,they forget about the blood,
etc.
Etc.
So I think that's a message fortoday is you treat it like you
would any other scene?
It just so happens that there'sbeen a fire there as well,
(22:14):
absolutely.
But I've had presumptive bloodtests comes back as positives on
areas of blood that I wouldnever, ever have thought would
still come back with positivesand bits and pieces.
I know there's a bit ofresearch trying to take place
around still trying to get dnaprofiles from that kind of stuff
.
So you touched on clothingthere.
Emma.
You're one of only few peoplethat I know in the UK that can
(22:34):
sort of comment and have gotsome expertise on clothing, in
particular in flash burns, inrelation to whether people are
in close proximity to flashburns.
So can you just take us throughthat for the audience.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Flash burns.
If you're a medicalprofessional you think of that
as sort of the skin gets a bitred because you've had brief
exposure to a fire.
For us, as fire scientists, wetalk about flash burning.
We really mean to the clothing,we mean that somebody has been
in the presence of a vapor cloud, ignition, somebody's poured
petrol or spilt petrol or asimilarly volatile liquid.
(23:08):
It's got to be volatile,otherwise you can't get that
nice big cloud, a nice big cloudbuilding up above it.
It's ignited with a flame or aspark and the person is in or at
the edge of that cloud.
Their clothing will get veryslightly scorched or heat
affected so it could melt,depending on what it is, but it
(23:28):
might be invisible to the nakedeye.
Sometimes it can be gross andyou get really like puckering to
, especially sort of some of thevery cheap synthetic things and
the very thin syntheticanything that says don't stand
near a fire, so stay away fromnaked sources of flame.
That will pucker rather thanjust superficially melt and
scorch.
But if it's superficiallymelted, the wearer may not be
(23:50):
aware of it.
They may think they've gottenaway with it with some slightly
shorter eyebrows.
But in those cases if theclothing is taken as exhibits
and submitted.
They can be examined under amicroscope and we can find the
melted fiber ends or thescorching or the shortening of
the fibers on things like cotton, and that's great.
(24:13):
But obviously there are otherthings to take into
consideration.
If somebody is a smoker, thenthey may actually often have
scorches around their cuff fromwhere they're lighting their
cigarette behind their hand andthe lighter comes into contact
with the cuff.
Somebody might have a hob, agas hob that clears up sometimes
, and it sometimes flashes upand affects your cuff and also
manufacturing damage.
(24:33):
The manufacturing processesoften flame wash garments in
order to make them nice andsmooth and look all shiny and
new.
That's all fine.
We can differentiate betweenthose using the patterns.
So what we look for is thedistribution of any fire damage
or melting or scorching acrossthe garments, across the whole
(24:54):
outfit, if we can, and then wecan put that in the context of
whether or not it'smanufacturer's damage, exposure
to an overly hot tumble dryer,or whether or not it's exposure
to something like flash burning.
It is not just about onegarment on its own, with a
little bit of singeing to thecuff does not make flash burning
.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Sure, and I think and it's about, as you say, put put
it in context, like if suspector saying that I had my back to
the fire when it was ignitedyou'd be looking to see if that
correlates with some of theflash burn.
I remember the last job thatyou and I actually worked on.
I don't know if you remember it, but the victim was removed and
there was a lot of cigarettes.
I don't know if you went, wewent through the drawer and
there was a lot of cigarettes.
I don't know if you wentthrough the drawer and there was
her pyjamas and she hadcigarette burns all over her
(25:37):
pyjamas where she wasintoxicated and kept burning
herself.
And so again, just about thecontext and I had another job in
Glasgow as well about thecontext of those ignitable
liquids.
It's really important tounderstand do they have a
legitimate reason for beingthere or not, because there are
ignitable liquids all around thehouse.
Really, I mean, if you find apetrol can in the middle of the
front room, then yeah, I mean,you see that you questions need
(26:01):
to be asked most of us wouldn'thave a petrol can in the middle
of the front room.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
But I can guarantee you that I have had jobs in the
past where somebody said well,that petrol can's just there for
me to use the petrol as asolvent to clean these motorbike
parts, for example yeah andthat for them was a completely
normal thing, which would havebeen absolutely.
I'm not having an open can ofpetrol in my house.
It's crazy, but for some peopleit's normal and that's a big
thing.
(26:24):
With all of our jobs, CSIs andfire scientists, what we
consider normal, we can't carryinto our scenes.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, exactly Every CSI will tell you when they
first start the job.
I can't believe this is howpeople live and you've seen it,
and CSI see it on a regularbasis.
Like this is how peopleactually live, and whether
that's highly cleanly, orwhether it's hoarders, or
whether it's drug takers, etcetera, et cetera, then you
definitely do see some oddthings and you have to put that
in context.
You have to understand thatFantastic.
(26:55):
Is there one job, Emma, thatyou think that's really impacted
upon you or you really learnedsome lessons from?
Is there a particular harrowingcase that you can speak of?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I think every case teaches you something.
The minute you think you knowit all, you're in all sorts of
trouble.
There are so many cases where Ihave learned things over the
years.
I've been doing this for 19years now.
It's been a long time thereover the years.
I've been doing this for 19years now it's been a long time.
There are things that you learnwhen you're first starting and
there are things that you learnas you move through your career
and when you first start thatlearning curve is steep, really
(27:24):
steep.
As you move on it sort oflevels off a bit, but every now
and then there's a little sortof peak in your learning because
something new happens,something new comes along.
For me, one of the things thatcame along in my career has been
lithium-ion batteries.
They were around and then theywere and now they're everywhere.
It's something that we all hadto learn about.
We spent a lot of time makingsure that people know that
(27:45):
through sort of training withthe UKFI and that sort of thing.
As far as individual cases go,there will always be cases that
I will remember, for good andbad reasons, some of them
because I never worked out whatcaused it and part of me wonders
whether or not I should havebeen able to, because that's
(28:05):
just the way we work.
I might have been brought inlater.
I've done quite a lot of reviewsand, starting with Prometheus,
we do quite a lot of reviews.
So we're on the NCA, we're ontheir database, their scientific
database.
So we often get a lot ofreviews.
So we're on the NCE, we're ontheir database, their scientific
database.
So we often get a phone call tosay could you review this job
for us and let us know ifthere's anything else that could
be done?
Now, in those situationssometimes we turn around and say
(28:29):
I think, honestly, you arewhere you are, there's nothing
more that we can do.
And other times we don't seethat.
Other times we work on the case, we do extra work, we do
ignition tests, we do proof ofconcept ignition tests more than
anything else.
So we're not doing fullreconstructions, because you
cannot fully reconstruct a fireto be exactly the same as the
(28:51):
incident was.
You just can't do it.
But we'll do small scaleignition tests and proof of
concept tests and we'll revieweverything and we'll write a
report.
And a couple of the ones that Iremember most are those kind of
reviews where I haven't been tothe scene, so you're already a
little bit on the back foot.
But through doing all of thatsort of extra work, it is extra
(29:13):
work.
It is hard.
It is hard to review jobs onpaper and through photographs,
it is hard.
But through doing that andgiving evidence in court on
those jobs, you see the justicethat needed to be done, that was
delayed for whatever reason inthe first instance and might
have taken sort of three years,when normally you would expect
(29:35):
it to take six to 12 months toget to court.
And those are the ones that Ithink about most, where I'm just
I have been part of the machineand the machine has worked for
a change.
I mean.
By the same token I can talkabout defence cases where,
similarly, the prosecution hasbeen certain this person has
done a thing, but then, whenI've reviewed it as a scientist,
(29:55):
there really hasn't been theevidence for it.
It's been more of a case ofunfortunate circumstances than
it has anything else.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
When those things are all pointed out, then you don't
have your D in court anymorebut nobody's in prison and then
they shouldn't be.
I was talking the last podcast,actually, with David.
We were talking about cognitivebias and I always thought when
I first started in 1999 as a CSI, the police must be right.
But they're not always rightand I think as I've got older
and mature and I've seen some ofthe things that have happened.
It's very rarely malicious,it's often just miscommunication
(30:30):
or not looking at the rightarea or that tunnel vision or
cognitive bias that leads people.
And Peter Mancy had one recentlywhich he sort of put on
LinkedIn and very obvious itwasn't a deliberate fire, but
you wonder how it got to thatstage.
You wonder how it got to thatpoint where it needed someone.
It took until the defense.
But I guess, as we were talkinglast week, was that you are
(30:51):
that last sort of checks andbalances in the last defense, if
you like.
But yeah, we should talk aboutyou are ex-president, you are
you the president after?
Yeah, okay, talk me through,ukfi so the ukfi.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
I'm sure pete mancy will have talked about this with
you and die also maybe die isthe president.
I am past president and onceyou've been a president you are
always a past president.
I was president a couple ofyears ago, so not long after the
pandemic.
I was the president at the timeof the reopening of the
conferences.
It was an interesting timebeing.
(31:27):
During that.
We had to postpone our annualtraining conference, our winter
conference that year, becauseCovid was ripping around again
and I happened to get Covid onthe date that the conference was
meant to be.
So I'm quite glad we didpostpone that.
So I did the AJM, the annualgeneral meeting with COVID.
I felt atrocious.
I've no idea if I covered allthe points I was meant to.
(31:47):
We got through it.
So I started with the UKFI along time ago.
I was still at the FSS when Istarted going to UKFI meetings.
It's quite handy because withthe LFB, with Pete being along
the road, a lot of the meetingswere just up the road so I could
just pop along there and it wasnice and easy.
I joined the board in 2015.
First I was co -operated on andthen elected on the following
(32:09):
year.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
And you're still the editor, aren't you the editor of
the journal?
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yes, I'm still the editor of the journal.
I'm no longer dealing with thesocial media.
Lauren is now dealing with that, so it took a while to find
somebody who would take thesocial media off my hands Mainly
, I think, because we do so.
It has an Instagram page,facebook and X I suppose it's
called now rather than Twitterand X Apparently, generationally
(32:34):
.
It's quite difficult to findsomebody who can deal with all
three of those.
Lauren has taken it on, so I'mquite glad about that.
But I am still editor of thejournal and just before this
conversation today, I wasputting the finishing touches to
the next journal.
I've just sent it off to beprinted.
We've got two really goodarticles in that.
We are always looking forarticles.
We won't just publish anythingif you send me something and I
(32:56):
send you an email back sayingthank you very much for your
efforts, but it it's just that,for whatever reason, it's not
going to fit in with the journal.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
I should say you're an award winning journal as well
.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
So, whilst I choose the articles and put it all
together, we have a peer reviewsystem.
Every article that's sent init's put through the peer review
system, which means that twomembers of the board have to
okay a journal for publication.
If the two reviewers who do itone of them sees it's close but
not quite there, we might sendit back for rewrite, but we
won't publish it if it's notgood enough.
And I think that process, alongwith some of the jazzier
graphics and things that we'veput on it, those things have
made it a nicer read.
It's a nice, glossy magazine.
It turns up on your doorstep,which is always a good thing.
(33:55):
Obviously, we have electronicversions of it, so if you want
to read it on the website andthen it's always going to be
available there as a sort of anarchive.
But yeah, it has won two IWAIInternational Association of
Arts and Investigatorspublication awards yeah, it's
got credible stuff in it.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
So, yeah, I really look forward to my getting mine.
We should mention as well I'lllet you mention it about the
upcoming conference.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yes, so we do two conferences a year and the
summer conference is coming upon the 1st of July, so it's
always the first Monday in Julyfor the summer conference.
This one is a bit different.
So this one we have smallernumbers so we don't have as many
places available, but it isn'ta sitting in a lecture hall
being talked at conference.
It is a workshop basedconference.
(34:41):
So it's much more practical andfor most of UK EFI members we
are practical learners, we likedoing things.
It's all well and good to sitthere and have the words spoken
at you, but it's much better toget your hands dirty.
That is what this conference is.
We've been working since I waspresident, because it's been in
the works for a long time and wefinally finally found a way to
(35:03):
actually make it work.
But yeah, it should befantastic.
Unfortunately, due to aconvergence of courts, training
courses and on call, I won't beable to be there, so I'll have
to have somebody else tell meall about it yeah, well, I'm
exactly the same.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
I booked it and I can't go either now.
So, unfortunately, because ofsome annual leave bits and
pieces in Saudi, but yeah, Ican't go either.
So I'm going to get someone togo in my place and tell me all
about it.
But that should be good.
It should be good, and it's asyou say.
I think the cheaper rate isprobably gone past now, but it's
still a be a round robin thingand it's going to be really
(35:35):
really good.
I think it's really good.
So, all right, listen, I'm abit of a gadget man.
Is there a piece of kit orequipment that you think that
you can't do without?
I sometimes ask this questionis there a bit of kit or
equipment that you think, oh, Ican't do without that?
Speaker 2 (35:48):
see, the thing is you can this job with mostly with
what's in your brain.
That's where most of this isyour typical little bits of
tools, your trowels and all thatsort of stuff.
But if you had to have a gadgetyou're asking us for a gadget
gadget then I would have to saythe pid.
The pid has been really useful.
We all have one on our vans, soit's a photoionization detector
(36:10):
.
For those of you that don'tknow what a pid is, but it's a
little handheld device.
We do it.
We talk in acronyms all the timeand we assume the other person
knows I know you do, butsomebody else might not and it's
a little handheld device andit's basically a little sniffer
and it can help you locate whereyour better flammable liquid
sample might be.
I've used it on jobs where I'vehad a fire at a front door and
(36:33):
there's nothing left with thefront door, so I'm not going to
be able to take any of that as asample.
And I've taken the flagstonesup at the base of the front door
and used the PID to work outwhich section of the sand or
soil is going to be better totake.
And it works really well.
It is different to a dog.
A dog can search a wide area ina much shorter time and can
give you a really good hitwithin that context.
(36:54):
But sometimes when it's areally strong smell, the dog can
get a bit turned around becausethey're following those vapor
clouds and if the vapor cloudsare converging and mixing they
start to really struggle withthat, whereas the pig doesn't
follow a vapor cloud in the sameway.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
So the pig only detects what you're pointing its
nose at yeah, the dogs can getif it's outdoors and it's windy
day as well.
That can affect, obviously,whether they're zoning down
their targeting etc.
One question I want to ask you,because are you seeing much?
I mean 3d scanning and all thatkind of stuff is very current
at this moment time.
Is that something you'relooking into?
Is that something that thepolice forces, csis, are
(37:30):
starting to do for you, orwhat's the sort of rep on that?
Speaker 2 (37:33):
no csi is offered to do that for me, but we are
looking at doing it ourselves.
So we've started trialing apiece of equipment to see if
it's workable in the context ofwhat we do and at the moment it
looks pretty good.
A bit of LIDAR, it looks prettygood and I think it would be
really useful for courts to beable to do that.
10-15 years ago I used to seeit to police.
(37:55):
By all means, do a 3D plan andyou can blow it up and zoom in
on bits.
It only has in it what you putin it, whereas with these scans
it's what was there.
And as long as you take themproperly and take them slowly
and get all of the data points,then it can be fantastic.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, I think it's going to complement I sense,
certainly in my area that I'mcurrently in.
I sense that they're pushing itand it's almost going to
replace I can never see itreplacing photography or your
notes or anything else.
I think it's a fantastic tool,more for when it gets to court
and you can actually go back, ineffect, put a pair of goggles
on and walk through the sceneagain and show in the whole
(38:32):
context as a homogenous kind ofapproach, rather than because I
found that when I want to getright down into the detail of it
, it's only really going to be aphotograph that's going to give
me the level of definition thatI want.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Well, also because a fire is removed, you're removing
debris.
You're removing that loosedebris.
Are you going to take a lidarscan?
Every shovel full, every 10shovel fulls?
When do you do it at thebeginning, do you do it the end?
What about all of those thingsthat green in the debris?
They've all still got to berecorded, and photography is the
best way, definitely.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
You get your context as you go down.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
What does that mean?
The European Network ofForensic Science Institutes?
Yeah, MCA.
They had their meeting in Dundeelast month.
They had the German Institutedemonstrate essentially a full
VR suit where their investigatorwould be able to go into the VR
room and interact with them ina way that we can move things
(39:26):
around with a bit of LiDARscanning, but not to the same
extent as they can do.
But I think that is the realityof a national institution,
compared to the England andWales model, which is
essentially private companies.
The budget just isn't there tocover that and the police budget
gets split over severalorganisations.
(39:47):
None of those individualorganisations have enough to
push into that sort of research,but they also, because they're
all competitors, can't cometogether to push that research
through necessarily.
So yeah, so that's all a bit inTrangland and Wales.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
I'll give you a hot potato.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Especially being a former.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
FSS, exactly, exactly what I'm going to ask you now.
So good old days of FSS, orstay private.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
I think either forensic service that is
available to anybody who wantsto use it.
I think forensic service thatis available to anybody who
wants to use it.
I think the issue with puttinga cost and a payment method on
forensic services does everybodydetriment.
By everybody I don't just meanthe police, who obviously have
to pay for services, I also meandefendants with legal aid.
(40:33):
If you don't have the money,how do you afford a proper
defense, and I mean it foreverybody.
I think putting pound signs infront of something puts it to
detriment.
So from a justice point of view,I don't think it's a good thing
to have a fully private.
From a personal point of view,I have more freedom now than I
could do criminal um insurancework.
I can work for a privateindividual on a job where they
(40:56):
just don't understand what'shappened in their house and I
can make those decisions.
And for me that makes me a morerounded investigator.
So I am better at my job nowthan I was when I was back in
the FSS.
Yeah, yeah, that's probably thefairest take I can give.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
I like that.
I mean, I'm very jealous ofyour time in the FSS because, as
I said, when I was there, itwas this epitome of where you
wanted to get.
You were only invited really tosort of apply, but the amount
of experience you had in thattime and the interesting jobs
you must have got involved inwould be a fantastic
apprenticeship or training foranybody.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
So I'd only just been a fire investigator for so I'd
only been with the FIU for two.
I'd only been out on my own for18 months when I investigated
Lackanell House.
But it was a vigorous trainingprocess and I'd been exposed to
so many fires it was completelyexpected that you would be able
to handle it and deal with it,and I worked with an awful lot
(41:51):
of people on that job that Istill see now.
Pete Mancy was there as well,and it was probably at that time
the biggest job that I've everbeen involved in.
And it was quite daunting tohave the phone call as you're
driving home from the lab to sayhave you seen the news?
When that's the phrase that theon-call coordinator opens with
you know you're in trouble.
So that was probably at the time.
(42:11):
It was a really longinvestigation, involved a lot of
lab work and worked with NickCarey as well.
Looking at the electrical stuff.
I think I wrote the finalreport in something like 2013.
So when I was at Prometheus,that's how long it took to
finally get through to sort ofbeing at Inquest.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Fantastic, I mean.
Thanks ever so much.
We're sort of unfortunately, aswe always do, emma, we're
running out of time, but thanksever so much for coming on.
I really appreciate it.
And again, prometheus for meeveryone if you're in the CSI
world, everyone knows Prometheus, and long may that continue,
from fantastic training and bitsand pieces, and everyone raves
about your training.
So if there are any forces outthere want some training, then
(42:51):
contact Prometheus.
You've got your website, etc.
I'll put all those details onthe podcast at the bottom.
But thanks again, emma, Ireally appreciate it thanks very
much for having us it's apleasure.
All right, thanks so much takecare hey, thank you for
listening to csi on fire.
Please don't forget to like,subscribe and suggest future
topics on our web page.
(43:12):
Remember factor non-verbal.
Take care, good hunting.
I hope to see you on the nextone.
Cheers.
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