Message #80018

[msmarieh]

I worked for a forensic engineering company. My company agreed to do some kind of a training session for arson investigators. My boss during a meeting rather jokingly said, if only we had a house to burn down. I asked him if he wanted me to find one. He laughed and said sure. By the next day, I had found one.

We decided to also make it a training exercise for the local fire department too. We set up all kinds of monitoring equipment (infrared cameras, smoke detectors, cameras, etc.) and then set fires in each room and put them out. We brought in the arson investigators and made a game of it – going through each room and trying to figure out the origin and cause of each fire and determine which were arson and which were accidental (obviously all were arson in reality, but this was a game, so we made some accidental LOL). Then as a grand finale we set the entire house  on fire and burned it all down, videotaping the entire experience. Then we served lunch. LOL. Definitely one of my more memorable projects.

They were able to publish several papers based on that fire. Very interesting experiments.
 
That was a heck of a training!