have several major fires in Northern and southern California, dozens of people are killed, hundreds are still missing. The great drought in the Region has contributed to this fall. Through them, the fire could spread rapidly over hundreds of square kilometers of forest. But drought alone kindled no fire.
Now the search for the trigger of the disaster begins. What has produced the Brand? Where has the first spark? Question is a variety of possibilities, for example:
flash of lightning, a fallen power line, open fire such as a Grill or glowing cigarettes, hot surfaces such as stove tops, exhaust pipes, Ovens, or halogen lamps, which heat up in operation.
“it is Checked whether someone has set a fire,” added the German brand expert Wolfgang Lang from Elz, near Limburg on the Lahn.
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experts first collect all the available information about a Brand to its origin region. “It is much easier to find a cause of fire within a radius of 10 meters as in the radius of 10 square kilometers,” says Lang. So, the experts satellite pictures and Videos, interview witnesses.
REUTERS
Where was noticed the fire first? How could it have spread? As the state of the Wind at the time in question? The experts need to rinse the Film of the events, in a sense, backwards.
A possible cause of the fire to the other one of the list
swipe to delineate the emergence of the area, close to all the eligible causes of fire. Also, interviews help: grilled to the time in the Region’s people, has someone been Smoking? Were somewhere stored in a flammable liquids?
in addition, the investigators Jestbet at the fire scene exactly clear, for example, the question of what there is yet-to-find items are just sooted up and which were actually recorded by the fire. It also depends on the extent and temperature of a fire, how much is left and from the action of the fire brigade.
So can it floats to pass, that, when you Delete traces of it disappear – for instance, the fire debris. It could tell the investigators, for example, if a fire were accelerators in use, and arson is out of the question. Ultimately, the extinguishing work but always take priority over the Fire forensics.
“For us the cooperation with the fire Department is very important,” says the arson investigator Sebastian Hergesell from Schönebeck in Saxony-Anhalt. “In the ideal case, one reconstructs the Events, even with the comrades.”
what is cause and What is a result of the fire?
the site of The fire must delimit the experts, what’s the starting point of the fire in question, and what is simply fallen victim to the flames. “A book, for example, can not burn by itself start,” says brand expert, Christian Wittenzellner, from the German company Xintecon.
MORE on THE TOPIC of fire disaster, Why is it in California so often
burns Whether a lightning could be to blame for a fire, the use of observational data to clarify. Monitoring networks to capture when and where an impact has taken place.
If a fallen power line comes as a cause of the question or only the consequence of the fire was to reveal the data of the network operator. There were in the Region of a voltage drop or a power failure, as the fire originated? Both can be excluded, increasing the likelihood of human behavior in the fire was the trigger.
The work is tedious and no matter how meticulously the fire investigators approach, they often remain a definitive result of guilty. “Only about a third of the cases a cause at the end you can clearly determine,” says brand expert Wittenzellner. “This is because the fire can alter the traces of its emergence and annihilate it.”
