The purpose of this page is to allow CCAI members to post events or issues of interest to the membership. If you have an issue, or know of an event that would be of interest to other CCAI members, send the information to: forthart@pacbell.net
Investigation 1A (click for information): Sept. 22-26, 2008 in El Cajon CA.
Investigation 1B (click for information): Oct 6-10, 2008 in El Cajon CA.
June 6, 2008: Project Time & Cost, Inc., and Atlanta, GA based international cost and forensic engineering firm is currently seeking Fire Explosion Consultants in the Meto Atlanta area This is a full time, salaried positions. Click Here for additional information
May 10, 2008
Advanced Explosives Identification and Energized
Pyrotechnic materials, class will be held
in Tulare California by the Central Valley
Arson Investigators Assoc, Tulare City Fire,
Visalia Police HDS Unit and Jay Combes, well
known Professional "Special Effects
Technition" who will conduct the class.
Several vehicles will be destroyed to show
effects of IED's and pyrotechnics.
For further information please Call Capt
Frank Furtaw, Tulare City FD @559.685.5048
or @ ffurtaw@ci.tulare.ca.us.
There is a charge of $20.00 for each attendee.
The Arsonist in our Lifestyle
Fire starters are a serious threat, but we
also have to take some of the heat.
By Dave Gardetta
October 28, 2007
Aweek ago today, Malibu residents woke to
discover that wildfire had broken out in
the hills above the Pacific Coast Highway.
By evening, nearly a dozen blazes were spreading
across several counties, with flames igniting
close to Poway, then Agua Dulce, Potrero,
Los Olivos, Santiago Canyon and Ontario.
For those of us who still enjoyed the luxury
of a nearby TV through Monday night, the
number of wildfires was being fixed, depending
on your local station, at 15, 13, even 17.
Hundreds of thousands of residents were ultimately
evacuated from the fires' paths.
How did this happen? Why did we go to bed
on Saturday night a fireless constellation
of communities, only to find ourselves swiftly
interconnected by a web of smoke that stretched
from the Mexican border to the Tejon Pass?
Yes, we knew the possibility of fire was
in the cards: the driest year on record,
a Santa Ana-wind event on schedule. But how
did things get out of hand so rapidly?
One clue could be found in the Griffith Park
fire of May 8, the opening salvo of L.A.'s
2007 fire season. That day, Los Angeles Fire
Department battalion chiefs witnessed fire
behavior previously unknown so early in the
season. What would have been described as
"light winds" last week were ferrying
embers off the fire line -- glowing cinders
that lighted dozens of
new blazes as far as a half a mile away,
instead of the few hundred feet that had
been typical. Parched vegetation, which in
wetter years would have been too green to
be ignited by an ember cooled after a half-mile
flight, was exploding in flame. Fires create
other fires, and the LAFD believed then that
Griffith Park's blaze was a window into the
current Santa Ana season. If embers were
already setting fire to the chaparral half
a mile out in early May, what might they
do in late
October?
Now we know. But that's only part of the
explanation for what happened last week.
After all, Malibu's fire didn't ignite Poway's
fire, and Running Springs didn't ignite Stevenson
Ranch. Something else had to be in play --
more than just the downed power lines that
were initially suggested as a cause.
Forest fires are ignited by all kinds of
things, but 98% are caused by human activity,
and of those, a not-insignificant percentage
are the result of arson. Following the terrible
fire season of 2003, one study found that
whenever a fire was burning through a Southern
California national forest, there was a nearly
1-in-4 chance that another national forest
would erupt in flames -- suggesting copycats
at work, rather than just lightning, wind
and bad luck.
California Department of Forestry statistics
2003 and 2004 show that almost 7% of the
state's wildfires were caused by arson. That
adds up to 767 arson wildfires -- a number
that would come as news, likely, to anyone.
Imagine the effect that 767 arson forest
fires in New Jersey would have on the national
media -- but in a state as big as California,
they're barely noticed. What's more, the
department's numbers probably understate
the situation. Wildfire arson is a crime
different from any other, and it is extremely
difficult to identify. Immediately after
a murder or a mugging, the perpetrator is
still at the scene. But when an arsonist
lights a wildfire -- a favorite method is
to toss a cigarette tied to a bundle of matches
and a steel washer out a car window -- he
is often miles away before the brush erupts.
In his wake, a wildfire arsonist leaves the
largest crime scene police agencies ever
tackle. Unlike a torched warehouse, you can't
seal off 100,000 charred acres in yellow
tape. Emergency crews have trampled the site,
winds have blown through, and time has taken
its toll. The motives that are most common
when buildings are intentionally burned --
revenge, profit or extremism -- are less
often at play in an arson wildfire, leaving
the majority of them unsolved, if ever detected.
Forestry Department statistics for 2003-04
show 1,692 wildfires whose origin was never
discovered. How many were arson? Ultimately,
we may never know, just as we may never know
the number of last week's fires that were
works of arson. Officials have already said
that the large fire above Mission Viejo was
intentionally set, as was a separate fire
in Riverside County. But it would be foolish
not to consider that others may have been
arson as well.
Wildfire arsonists, like serial killers,
are generally considered to be deviants.
New York's most famous arsonist may have
been David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam"
killer, who claimed responsibility for about
2,000 fires. Southern California's most notorious
firebug is former Glendale arson investigator
John Leonard Orr, who is serving a life sentence.
Orr was 42 when he was arrested after a string
of fires; several psychiatrists have characterized
Berkowitz as a paranoid schizophrenic. For
those reasons, neither man fits the typical
profile of the arsonist, who is said by investigators
and psychiatrists to be a young white male
in his teens or 20s. He is angry, or a thrill-seeker
who gets pleasure from violence and destruction,
or someone looking for recognition by asserting
himself on the world. (As these descriptions
easily characterize young men everywhere,
it's plain we still don't understand the
arsonists in our midst.)
Steve Robles was 21 and fond of using an
arson technique he'd picked up from a reality
show called "L.A. Firefighters"
when he was arrested in 1997 and linked to
several fires. Robles, who had visited public
schools dressed as "Sparky the Fire
Dog" during fire-safety presentations,
later described his arrest as any average
young man would -- like something out of
a "Cops" episode. He is serving
an 18-year prison sentence.
As much as arsonists remain unmentioned by
officials during multiple-fire events --
for fear of copycats -- they are relentlessly
tracked afterward. Once a statutory crime
against property, arson was permanently established
as a violent crime by the federal Anti-Arson
Act of 1982. On top of the tragic deaths
in last week's fires, you had only to gaze
on some of the faces of the evacuees to see
that these too were crimes against people,
not property. Arsonists, however, are rarely
caught,
and convictions involving fire deaths are
rarer still.
Even though our emergency agencies are now
coordinating their efforts better than ever,
our fire seasons keep growing worse, our
conflagrations more terrible. Before last
Sunday, the 19 largest and most costly wildfires
in the state's history had all occurred in
the preceding quarter of a century. No doubt
that number will now be upgraded. And while
arson is an undeniable, unignorable part
of what makes Southern California's fire
season as destructive as it is (along with
drought and annual high winds), it is not
the primary factor.
Only one statistic has kept pace with our
explosion of wildfire numbers -- Southern
California's population. As it turns out,
there is a direct link between population
size and wildfire ignitions. While populations
have doubled and then doubled again in Southern
California, wildfire ignitions have grown
at nearly the same rate. Because nearly all
of our wildfires are caused by human activity
-- overwhelmingly unintentional -- the arrival
of millions more residents in the coming
decades will ensure a lot more fire.
A report released last summer in the journal
Ecological Applications -- and read by almost
no one -- found that a landscape with an
average of 45 humans per square kilometer
was the perfect ecological system for creating
the highest number of wildfire ignitions.
Lower the population, and less activity exists
to generate fires; raise it, and there is
less wild land to burn.
Something you couldn't help noticing in the
helicopter pan shots last week were the number
of roads, strung out loosely with houses,
that wound through the glowing chaparral-and-conifer
landscapes. The roads were everywhere, those
on the furthest horizons waiting for construction
starts. Gazing down on those houses, some
aflame, lining roadways from Blue Jay to
Ramona to Bouquet Canyon, even someone with
a passing knowledge of the metric system
could have concluded, "Yep -- looks
like about
50 people per square kilometer to me."
Maybe it is not just the arsonists but we
ourselves who are stacking the odds against
the best efforts of our own fire agencies.
We are the accidental arsonists.
Dave Gardetta is a senior writer at Los Angeles
magazine and the author of a cover story
in the current issue about the May 8 fire
in Griffith Park.