NFPA Journal - Fall 2022 - 60

Work in
Progress
Todd Willingham, there is a widespread
belief throughout the fire science community
that he was wrongfully put to
death for the murder of his children,
and that the evidence used in that
conviction was the result of flawed, outmoded,
and discredited approaches to
conducting fire investigations.
It is somehow appropriate that the
early evolution of NFPA 921 should so
closely parallel the long, high-profile
drama of the Willingham case-precisely
the kind of circumstance the guide,
through the application of science and
standardization, is intended to prevent.
When the first edition of the guide was
released in 1992, it spanned 119 pages
over 14 chapters. It also took seven years
to produce, in part due to a protracted
tug-of-war between science advocates
and stakeholders who believed the
old, established ways of conducting
investigations were not just sufficient,
but preferable. " There was a lot of controversy, "
says Phil Crombie, Jr., who
manages the forensic laboratory for
Travelers Insurance and is a member of
the OSAC subcommittee. " But all of that
work really advanced the state of fire
investigation. "
The struggle over science wasn't finished,
however-early revision cycles
were marked by attacks from the old
guard that viewed NFPA 921 as a threat
rather than an advancement. " For one
of those editions, we had something
like 150 public inputs to take science
out of NFPA 921, " Watson recalls. " The
inputs were identical-same wording,
same grammatical errors-and most
came from the public sector. We'd
always talked about science, like the
temperatures things burn or melt at, but
now that we're saying 'use the scientific
method' in the guide, everybody freaks
out. But we got that right-the scientific
method is the right one to apply. "
The current edition, released last
year, contains 29 chapters and 450
pages. More than 500 public inputs
were submitted. The guide also
includes a wealth of color photographs-the
only NFPA document to do
so. Watson argued for color when he
became chair of the technical committee
in 2008, along with an insistence
that any new piece of information that
60 | NFPA JOURNAL * FALL 2022
went into the guide be supported by
science. " We wanted NFPA 921 to be
more of a teaching document, and the
color helped us better articulate and
demonstrate what we were trying to
say, " he says. " A friend of mine used
to describe NFPA 921 as being like a
sex-ed manual without the pictures-if
you're trying to show burn patterns in
a black-and-white photo that's been
It is appropriate that
the early evolution of
NFPA 921 should so
closely parallel the long,
high-profile drama of
the Willingham case-
precisely the kind of
circumstance the guide,
through the application
of science and
standardization,
is intended to prevent.
copied and scanned, it's hard to differentiate
the lines of demarcation,
whereas if you have a color photograph,
it jumps out at you. That completely
changed the dynamic of the guide. "
Color photographs have been included
in NFPA 921 since the 2011 edition.
A critical component in the maturation
of NFPA 921-and in the field of
fire investigation-is the development
of guidance on burn patterns. The patterns-V-shaped,
hourglass, doughnut,
and inverted cones on walls and objects,
to name a few-left on surfaces and
materials subjected to the effects of fire
amount to a fingerprint of the event.
Knowing how to analyze those patterns
is an essential skill for determining
the origin, movement, and cause of a
fire. The role of ventilation in creating
burn patterns was long misunderstood,
experts say, and resulted in misinterpretations
of fire scenes. The more a
fire progresses, the more damage tends
to occur at ventilation points such as
doors and windows, making it difficult
to determine where the fire actually
started. Research into the impact of
ventilation on burn patterns produced
an " origin matrix " that is now part of
NFPA 921, and ventilation remains a
high-priority area for further research,
according to the OSAC report.
" That was one area where we had
it wrong, " Watson says, of the conventional
wisdom around burn patterns
and their creation. " But the research
caused us to look more critically at the
problem and to ask more questions.
And one of those questions was, 'What
does the science say?' "
SOBERING ASSESSMENTS
In 2009, The National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) published " Strengthening
Forensic Science in the United States:
A Path Forward, " an evaluation of the
needs of the country's forensic science
community, including fire investigation.
The report was commissioned by
Congress in the wake of DNA testing
that revealed hundreds of wrongful
criminal convictions nationwide, many
of them due at least in part to forensic
testimony that was inaccurate or
simply wrong. Aside from DNA, the
report concluded, " no forensic method
has been rigorously shown to have the
capacity to consistently, and with a
high degree of certainty, demonstrate
a connection between evidence and a
specific individual. " It also noted that
lawyers and judges are insufficiently
trained in scientific methodology, while
arguing that police and prosecutors
have too much control over crime labs,
creating conflicts of interest.
The NAS project was the precursor
to Department of Justice funding,
administered by the National Institute
of Standards and Technology
(NIST), intended to address the lack
of discipline-specific forensic science
standards. In 2014, NIST created OSAC
and its 22 subcommittees to draft proposed
standards and submit them to
standards development organizations,
including NFPA. The subcommittees
also track and publicly share the
research and development needs they
encounter as part of conceptualizing
those standards.
With the publication last year of
" Strengthening Fire and Explosion
Investigation in the United States:
NFPA Journal - Fall 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Fall 2022
