Opinion ID: 201898
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Fire Marshal's Investigation

Text: 3 In the early morning of October 24, Inspectors Brian Donaldson and Richard Strand of the Nashua Fire Marshal's Office arrived to investigate the fire. The basement was still full of smoke, and the firefighters were ventilating the basement with a mechanical fan in the stairway. After examining the exterior of the building and allowing some time for the smoke to dissipate, the inspectors entered the building and quickly determined that the fire had originated in the basement. They examined certain obvious potential sources — the furnace, an oil tank, the hot water tank, some electrical equipment, and an electrical panel — and ruled them out because that area of the basement had not suffered any charring or flame damage. Further investigation narrowed the source of the fire to the southeast corner of the basement, in a pile of papers on the floor in front of a set of shelves. They separated the pile of papers into smaller piles in a center aisle in the basement so as to better examine the stack, and determined that the outer edges of the pile were burned, but the inside, where the pile had been tightly packed, was not burned. They also observed an electric clock that had stopped at 10:44 PM, apparently because a circuit breaker tripped after fire damaged the wires. 4 Using techniques of fire cause and origin investigation, the inspectors ruled out natural causes (such as lightning, magnified sunlight, bacterial spontaneous combustion, or static electricity) and accidental causes (such as mechanical devices, heating devices, electrical equipment or wires, or discarded cigarette butts). They noted that the basement was filled with thick smoke and unusually high carbon monoxide levels. Since there was little flame damage outside the immediate area of the pile, the inspectors theorized that the fire had begun quickly but then became oxygen-starved and reduced to a smolder, which was how the firefighters found it. 5 When the inspectors concluded that the fire had been intentionally set, they decided to gather further evidence. They summoned a canine handler and fire investigator with the State Fire Marshal's Office, who arrived with a dog trained to detect petroleum distillates, which can be used as fire accelerants. The dog alerted to parts of both the original pile of papers and the parts that had been moved aside. The inspectors removed samples of those sections for laboratory analysis, and placed them in five airtight containers. 6 Inspector Strand brought the samples to Morris Boudreau, a forensic chemist at the State Police Forensic Laboratory. Boudreau detected that some, though not all, of the samples contained ignitable liquids: medium petroleum distillates in some, and normal alkanes in others. 2 Both classes of fluids can be used as fire accelerants.