You arrive at a remote farmer’s field and are presented with a completely burned out tractor. Was it arson, a lightning strike overnight, arcing from recently performed maintenance? In another scenario, you arrive at a home where there is fire damage to a car parked in the garage as well as to the structure itself. It’s assumed that the origin of the combustion was the automobile due to some maintenance undertaken a few days prior to the fire. In both of these investigations, the source of the ignition was not what a layperson would have guessed.

Welcome to the world of fire and explosion investigations. In the article “Beyond the Burn” by McKayla Major, the reader is provided with an insightful explanation of how focusing on what is most heavily damaged at a fire scene can lead to erroneous findings as to what actually caused the ignition.

You can read the entire article at the following link:

Beyond the Burn – Damage Does Not Equal Causation

Now back to the two scenarios described earlier…the tractor fire originated from complications with a rock collector attached to the tractor and the car & structure fire was a result of the careless disposal of a cigarette butt!