FIRE BOMB - New Zealand Fire Service

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Callous attack on house The arsonist’s callous disregard for human life has been highlighted once again with a suspicious fire in Sandringham, Auckland. A young couple was woken by smoke alarms in their rented Truro Road home about 3am to find smoke billowing through their lounge and flames flickering through the floorboards. While the woman rang 111 on her cell phone (the land line was dead), her husband raced to the side of the house to connect a hose, which was not possible because someone had removed the male hose adaptor. The adaptor was later found on the aerial of the couple’s car – presumably placed there by the arsonist. With the couple clearly unable to control the rapidly spreading blaze, they went to the roadside to wait for the fire appliances. It was fortunate that they vacated the house quickly – an LPG heater with a 9kg gas bottle was in the lounge and soon blew its burst disk, creating a major fire. 4 Issue No. 51 The Issue Investigating FSO Terry Castle says a fireball between the garden gate and the underside of the house would have reached more than 1000C. “If any firefighter had been caught in the fireball, regardless of wearing level 2 gear, that person would have either been killed or seriously injured.” The fire required heavy streams of water being applied before it was effectively extinguished by 3.50am. The house was valued at $750,000 and is beyond repair. Most of the furniture in the house was destroyed or seriously damaged. The couple had a contents insurance policy. Terry believes someone deliberately set up the fire. “That person may well not have known that there was an LPG cylinder in the lounge of the house that would blow its burst disk,” Terry says. “I would have thought that any offender would have had a reasonable idea that the house was occupied.” Investigations indicate that someone The damage to this Sandringham house is evident after an arsonist is believed to have set a fire in a basement storage room. A hose adaptor was also removed to prevent a household hose being connected. This was later found on the radio aerial of the car. You can see it on the front cover photo! had broken in through a locked wooden door to a basement storage room, most probably spread flammable liquid, moved a separate LPG cylinder outside the storage room and under a deck, then lit the flammable liquid and ran off. The young couple had been renting the house for about three months after spending 10 years overseas. The attack might have been aimed either at the owner of the property or the people previously living there. No one has so far been charged in relation to the fire. Fortunately, this story is an exception rather than the rule for fires in New Zealand. As Manager of Fire Investigation and Arson Reduction, Peter Wilding says less than 8% of fires in this country are of a suspicious nature and the bulk of those are minor fires involving rubbish or small vegetation. These statistics place us below international arson experience such as the US (25%) UK and Australia (more than 40%). Photo Duncan Courtier
Accelerant detectors beef up investigation processes How many rugby balls would it take to cover 5463 rugby fields? Answer: 1 billion. By Peter Wilding, Manager Fire Investigation and Arson Reduction Now imagine being asked to walk across those 5463 fields covered with balls and find the one ball marked with an ‘A’ (for accelerant). What are your chances? Without the newest technology, they are minimal. However, now we have state-of-theart Photo Ionisation Detectors (ppb PIDs) that can test burnt debris for traces of accelerant. Each fire region is receiving these devices, which are 1000 times more sensitive than the latest gas detectors being issued to the Hazmat units. The accelerant-detecting ppb PIDs are one of a range of new measures being introduced into the Fire Service as we ramp up our ability to detect and deter arson and improve our fire investigation processes. Other tools include improved intelligence gathering capability, automatic data analysis tools and pocket-sized gas detectors to monitor atmospheric conditions for fire investigators. To support these new measures a range of initiatives is under way that includes a memorandum of understanding between the Fire Service and Police around fire investigation and arson reduction, a national protocol to clarify coordinated fire investigation by multi-agency investigators and vastly improved fire investigation data storage within the Fire Service. Later this year we will be hosting a national arson reduction forum to encourage a cooperative and coordinated approach to arson reduction by stakeholders across our community. International experience has shown that a coordinated community The New Zealand Fire Service Magazine approach is by far the most effective way of dealing with and reducing arson. Training has been identified as a key area that will improve our fire investigation capability. This will include regular refresher training and updates for all staff, computer simulation and the introduction of an advanced diploma in fire investigation recognised across the fire and police agencies throughout Australasia. To provide national coordination and support to all regions, a national fire investigation and research unit is to be established. A key function of this unit will be to extract learning from our investigations nationally and ensure advocacy for changes to reduce further fire risk. This will involve both internal communication and liaison with other government agencies, the insurance industry, various trades organisations, product manufacturers and importers. New Technology New technology is now available to detect accelerants in fires such as this in Sandringham, Auckland (see story on p4). Work is also under way to review the SMS fire reporting system to make it more user-friendly and effective in identifying fire patterns and risks. Finally, considerable resources have been invested in our fire awareness and intervention programme (FAIP) in the past 12 months, and there has been a big in the number of interventions. New aspects of this programme will be added shortly to address large school groups for areas where fire lighting is occurring but where the individuals responsible are not known. All this constitutes an enormous amount of work and much of the initial work has been completed. Staff should begin to see many of these initiatives taking shape in the next few months. Watch this space…. For more information, contact Peter Wilding, Manager Fire Investigation and Arson Reduction. August 2009 Photo Duncan Courtier 5
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