BY SIFS India | October 12, 2020
Frequently we see news alerts, regarding house fires, industrial fires, bush fires, arson crimes, fire rescues, and evacuation. The question always raised is, Was it arson? Where did the fire start?
As we all know that fire can destroy houses and all possessions in less than an hour. It can reduce an entire forest to a pile of ash and charred remains. Fire kills more people every year than any other force of nature. But on the other hand, fire is also helpful in our daily life in many ways.
Fire is uncontrolled combustion. It involves combustible materials which are found around us. It involves the oxidation of fuel and emits energy in terms of heat and radiation.
Therefore, fuel, oxygen, and heat are the three basic essential components to initiate fire. Any chemical substance (solid, liquid or gas) used to start a fire or increase the intensity or speed is known as fuel.
The notable ones are:
• Availability of combustible material and oxygen
• Temperature of fire
• Humidity
• Direction and velocity of wind
Arson is quite frequently committed mala fide crimes. According to the definition, arson is conscious lighting of a fire, it is a crime of intentionally, deliberately, and maliciously setting fire to buildings, wildland areas, houses, vehicles or other property with the intent to cause damage.
Arson being a malicious set up of fire, the arsonist would try to achieve:
The culprit uses various devices and materials for initiation:
The motives of fire setting behavior could be:
The fire and arson investigators examine the fire scene, identify and collect the physical evidence from the scene.
The evidence, found could be accelerants, fire debris, materials used for initiation etc. A very important part is proceeding with the analysis itself, that is sample collection. T
he samples have to be collected from the place where the fire started. Because there may be traces of accelerant possibly found. A fire may be put off too quickly or due to oxygen shortage, at the point of arson.
So in that cases, the chemical analysis of fire debris can tell us what kind of accelerants was used to initiate the fire.
The most important part is samples storage: Containers which is used for samples storage have to be air tight and clean, to avoid any loss and contamination.
Bags and containers made up of polythene cannot be used because they can emit some type of impurities. So the best and most frequently used are air-tight metal cans.
It is an extremely versatile approach, In this compounds are separated on the basis of their relative affinity with the stationary phase of the column. GCMS is commonly used for the analysis of petroleum products residues in fire debris.
Chromatography is the modern and versatile method used for the separation of organic compounds. TLC involves the separation of the components of a mixture over a thin layer of an adsorbent.
It is a unique separation technique for separation of organic components of mixture. It is used for detection of separated organic compounds based on different interaction of analysis between liquid phase passing through a column.
It is most useful for identifying chemicals either organic or inorganic, in which the data is collected and converted, and interference pattern to a spectrum.
Bumrah, Sarin and R. N. Sharma. “Analysis of petroleum products in fire debris residues by Gas Chromatography. ” Arab journal of Forensic Science 1(2017) :560-513
Lentini, J. J. “Scientific protocol for fire investigation”(2006)
National Institute of Justice nij. ojp. gov
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