IOWA CHAPTER INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ARSON INVESTIGATORS, INCORPORATED

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "IOWA CHAPTER INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ARSON INVESTIGATORS, INCORPORATED"

Branden Neil Phelps
5 years ago
Views:

1 IOWA CHAPTER INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ARSON INVESTIGATORS, INCORPORATED Ames and Quality Inn & Suites Ames, Iowa See what s in store for this year!

$REGISTRATION INFORMATION Ames QUALITY INN & SUITES\ 2601 East 13th Street Ames, IA, US, 50010 Make your own reservations Phone: 515-232-9260 (Single - $92 + tax) Room block will be held until August$

2 REGISTRATION INFORMATION Ames QUALITY INN & SUITES\ 2601 East 13th Street Ames, IA, US, Make your own reservations Phone: (Single - $92 + tax) Room block will be held until August 27, 2013 Registration for Iowa Chapter members is $250 prior to September 1, This includes noon meals, BBQ ticket and one banquet ticket. After September 1, 2013 the price is $275. One-day registration is $100, does not include banquet, BBQ or membership. Extra banquet tickets may be purchased for $35 each. Registration for non-iowa Chapter members is $350 prior to September 1, 2013, after September 1, 2013 the price is $375. The seminar registration does not include membership. Iowa Chapter membership is $30. Send registration form to: Iowa Chapter IAAI INC. PO Box West Des Moines, IA ALL SEMINAR ATTENDEES ARE REQUIRED TO WEAR THEIR NAME TAGS AT ALL SEMINAR ACTIVITIES. Please Note: On WEDNESDAY Classes are running concurrently. The BASIC FIRE CAUSE DETERMINATION (Jeff Hutcheson & John Ticer) and FIRE DEBRIS ANALYSIS (Sharee Wells) in the morning and BASIC FIRE CAUSE DETERMINATION (Jeff Hutcheson & John Ticer) (Cont d) and NEGATIVE CORPUS (Meagher & Geer P.L.L.P. (STBA) in the afternoon. Please indicate below which class you will be attending. Wednesday Class With Jeff Hutcheson & John Ticer Wednesday Class With Sharee Wells and Meagher & Geer ELECTIONS The Chapter has the following positions open for elections: President, First Vice President, Second Vice President, Director at Large East and Director of Investigations SEMINAR REGISTRATION FORM Please Print or Type Name: Address: Employer: Telephone: Home Number Work Number IAAI Member? Yes No Seminar Registration $250:

3 2013 Iowa IAAI Conference September 17-20, 2013 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, :00 p.m. Board Meeting 3:00 p.m. Registration/Display Room Set-up 5:00 7:00 p.m. Early Registration 7:00 9:00 p.m. Report Writing Mark Boaz WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, :30 8:30 a.m. Registration 8:30 9:00 a.m. Opening Ceremonies President Mark Crooks Nominating Committee Report 9:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m. RUNNING CONCURRENTLY Basic Fire Cause Determination Jeffrey Hutcheson & John Ticer & Fire Debris Analysis Sharee Wells 12:00 1:00 p.m. Lunch (Furnished) 1:00 5:00 p.m. RUNNING CONCURRENTLY Basic Fire Cause Determination (Continued) Jeffrey Hutcheson & John Ticer and Negative Corpus Meagher & Geer P.L.L.P. (STBA) 5:00 6:00 p.m. Sectional Meetings 6:30 p.m. Reception (Cash Bar) & Barbeque THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, :00 11:00 a.m. Investigating Multi-Compartment Fire Behavior With Elevated Origins Steve Carman 11:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m. Annual Meeting 12:00 1:00 p.m. Lunch (Furnished) 1:00 5:00 p.m. Progressive Burn Pattern Development In Fully-Involved Fires Steve Carman 6:00 6:30 p.m. Social Hour (Cash Bar) 6:30p.m. Banquet FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, :00 a.m. 12:00 p.m. Testifying 101: How To Avoid Lawyer Tricks Karrie Clinkinbeard 12:00 p.m. Seminar Test

4 SEMINAR TOPICS AND SPEAKERS TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2013 REPORT WRITING Mark Boaz The class covers the basics of report writing, ensuring the information is accurate, understandable, and usable to the fire service, insurance industry and law enforcement. We will cover common mistakes made with new investigators, when learning to document their findings and how their conclusions can elevate their reputation or destroy it when tested in court. Mark Boaz is the Regional Fire Manager, Northwest Region for Donan Engineering Co., Incorporated. He worked six years as an Arson Investigator for the Kentucky State Police He had 14 years with the Madisonville Fire Department and 12 years as a State Fire Rescue Training Instructor. Basically, he is a guy who enjoys making a living with a shovel, getting other people answers about their tragedies. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2013 BASIC FIRE CAUSE DETERMINATION Jeffrey Hutcheson & John Ticer This workshop will focus on the basics of fire investigation. Defining and evaluating burn patterns combined with learning basic fire behavior to determine the area and point of origin will be emphasized. The class will also examine what information is needed by investigators to begin an investigation and how firefighters at the scene can be an important part of that investigation. Participants will rely on several case presentations to assist in understanding fire behavior and burn pattern analysis. The class will also briefly examine the primary motives for fire setting and how the fire scene can aid investigators in establishing motive. The class is intended for participants who are being exposed to fire investigations for the first time or who have limited training and experience in the field. Jeff Hutcheson, Assistant Fire Chief (Retired), spent 30 years with the Council Bluffs Fire Department before retiring in Jeff worked his way through the ranks and transferred into the Fire Prevention Bureau as a Fire Inspector/Fire Investigator where he spent three years before his promotion to Fire Marshal. Jeff is an IAAI-CFI and NAFI-CFEI. He is a Past President of the Iowa Chapter of IAAI and a current Board Member. He also serves as the Vice President of the IAAI Foundation, Inc. Jeff has been an adjunct instructor at Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs and has been a member of the Iowa Chapter since Upon his retirement from the CBFD, Jeff started working in the private sector as a Fire Investigator for Donan Engineering Company, Inc. S/A John Ticer has been with the Department of Public Safety for 23 years, 21 of which has been spent with the State Fire Marshal s Division. John has been a fire investigator and hazardous devices technician for 15 years and has investigated over 800 cases involving fires, explosions and improvised explosive devices. John has been a handler for the State Fire Marshal s Office accelerant canine for the past 9 years and has served as a member of the State s Meth lab entry team. John has instructed at the State Fire Marshal s 2 Week Fire and Arson School for the past 9 years, State s Winter Fire School, regional fire schools and has been an adjunct instructor for the Fire Sciences Program at Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs. John has been a member of the IAAI Iowa Chapter since FIRE DEBRIS ANALYSIS Sharee Wells Fire Debris Analysis is an advanced class that will discuss the ASTM E1618 procedure for analyzing, interpreting, and reporting fire debris samples. In addition, participants will learn how to correctly interpret a fire debris report and understand the significance of their results from the laboratory data to their scene hypothesis. Common sampling errors will be discussed and further instruction will provide correlations between matrix contributions that may lead to false positive interpretations in the petroleum-laced background. The process of spontaneous ignition will be discussed, and how the laboratory can identify vegetable oils in fire debris. Sharee Wells MS, F-ABC, holds a Master s of Science Degree and is a Certified Fire Debris Analyst by the American Board of Criminalistics. Sharee has performed well over 20,000 ignitable liquid determinations and has been deemed a court qualified expert witness in both criminal and civil cases. She is an adjunct instructor at the National Fire Academy and has served has a subject matter expert in the area of Forensic Evidence Collection. She has 10 plus years of experience with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences and is currently working as Laboratory Director for Forensic & Scientific Testing (FAST LAB) Alabama location. Sharee also serves as FAST LAB s Quality Manager and has overseen FAST LAB s recent nationally recognized ISO accreditation.

5 WEDNESDAY (Cont d), SEPTEMBER 18, 2013 NEGATIVE CORPUS, Meagher & Geer P.L.L.P. (STBA) Fire and explosion experts today continue to meet numerous challenges. One such challenge has been the ability to understand negative corpus implications and its impact on a fire/explosion origin and cause determination investigation. This block of instruction is designed to highlight the interplay between these "negative corpus" implications and the admissibility of expert testimony in fire/explosion investigations. This presentation targets the new and more experienced fire/explosion investigator alike. Without question, NFPA 921 and the scientific method will be covered, with an emphasis on the proven methodology of the scientific methodology. However, this course offers a unique perspective in taking the participant through the many legal analyses employed by the Courts to admit, exclude or limit expert witness testimony in fire/explosion investigations. Case studies from around the U.S. will be explored where experts testimony lives and dies by the Court. Participants will observe trends in these decisions, and what investigative methodology is needed in their future investigations. These fire cases are taken from various state and federal trial and appellate courts from around the U.S. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2013 INVESTIGATING MULTI-COMPARTMENT FIRE BEHAVIOR WITH ELEVATED ORIGINS Steve Carman Recently, discussions have emerged in the fire investigation community regarding elevated fires and their contribution to large blazes. Lab scale research in the 1980s demonstrated the propensity of these fires to produce high levels of carbon monoxide and identified the ignition behaviors of the vitiated upper layer. Full scale testing of these fires has only recently begun and remains limited. A historical review of selected elevated fires has been conducted that demonstrates the threat of death or serious injury these fires pose as well as the difficulties investigators face in accurately identifying their origins. One investigative challenge they have been shown to pose is the occasional steep, seemingly reversed damage gradient between the room of fire origin and adjacent spaces. Such apparent anomalies can prove vexing to investigators following the commonly accepted methodology of identifying fire origins by moving from areas of lesser to more extensive damage. In the past eighteen months, multiple, full-scale, elevated fire tests have been conducted attempting to recreate such conditions. In each test, the fires extended into adjacent spaces and burned beyond flashover. Subsequent examinations showed that in each case, the rooms of fire origin received far less damage than adjoining rooms. Examples of actual investigations will be discussed in which elevated fires have caused extensive damage in adjacent spaces that were later determined to be the rooms of fire origin. In a few known, related fatality fires, the fire cause determinations were mistakenly attributed to arson and serious consideration was given to filing homicide charges. Steve Carman (ATF Senior Special Agent/CFI, retired, IAAI-CFI, CFEI), is the owner of Carman & Associates Fire Investigation based in Northern California. He served as a Special Agent with ATF from 1988 to 2008 assigned to the Sacramento and Redding, California offices. He was certified as an ATF Certified Fire Investigator in 1993 and spent more than nine years as a member of the ATF's Western National Response Team. Steve graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 1980 with a B.S. degree with High Honors in Physical Sciences. Prior to joining ATF, he served six years as a Coast Guard officer including two as Commanding Officer afloat. After that he spent two years in the private sector in chemical and mechanical engineering. Steve has investigated several hundred large-loss fires with more than 70 fire deaths and average fire losses of more than $1,000,000. He has lectured internationally on various aspects of fire science and investigation including fire dynamics, fire chemistry and fire modeling. With his science and engineering background, Steve has focused much of his work and research towards the study of unusual fire behavior and its recognition during investigations. Among his works was the publishing of an ATF monograph in October 1994 detailing his conclusions regarding a nationally puzzling fire phenomenon dubbed High Temperature Accelerants. More recently, he has worked to educate those in the fire investigation community about the behavior of post-flashover and elevated fires. He is a past member of the Board of Directors of the IAAI. He is currently a graduate student at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo working towards earning his Masters degree in Fire Protection Engineering in 2013.

6 THURSDAY (Cont d), SEPTEMBER 19, 2013 PROGRESSIVE BURN PATTERN DEVELOPMENT IN FULLY-INVOLVED FIRES Steve Carman In 2005, fire investigators from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) designed and presented a seminar on Fire Dynamics. Two identical, one-room burn cells with standard-sized doorways were each burned for seven minutes. Hours later, fifty-three experienced fire investigators (who had not observed the fires) were asked to briefly examine the cells and identify in which quadrant they thought each fire had started. 5.7% of the students correctly selected the quadrant of origin in each cell. A subsequent review of experienced investigators responses to similar, post flashover exercises at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia revealed that since the early-1990s, about 8-10% of students correctly located the origins of similar fires. Those who were mistaken typically reported they were misled by burn patterns generated in fully involved, ventilation-controlled conditions. In 2008, three additional tests fires were set and monitored in single-room cells (similar to those mentioned above) at the ATF Fire Research Laboratory in Ammendale, Maryland. The tests were designed to evaluate burn pattern development in fully involved, ventilation-controlled fires with the same physical layouts and ignition scenarios. The principle variable between the tests was time of exposure to full fire involvement. Computer analysis using Fire Dynamics Simulator was employed to evaluate the usefulness of CFD modeling for investigators in explaining and identifying ventilation flows and the related burn pattern development. Additionally, analyses of heat flux, temperature and gas concentration data as well as the burn patterns were conducted to better understand the various mechanisms involved. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2013 TESTIFYING 101: HOW TO AVOID LAWYER TRICKS Karrie Clinkinbeard Isn t it possible your origin and cause conclusion could be wrong? Anything s possible right? How you handle questions like this (and other equally tricky ones) can make or break your testimony from credibility with the jury to admissibly on a Daubert challenge. This presentation will identify these traps and provide tips for navigating them. Karrie Clinkinbeard, J.D., CFEI, is a partner with Armstrong Teasdale LLP located in Kansas City, Missouri. She is a member of the firm s Fire and Electrical Liability practice group and represents utility companies, businesses, product manufacturers and fireworks companies, among others, in matters involving fires, explosions, electrocution, chemical release, product failure and carbon monoxide poisoning. She is a Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator and civil litigator. From scene management, origin and cause determination, to post-accident investigation, Karrie handles incidents such as product or equipment failures and industrial disasters. In many instances, she is involved at the initial event to evaluate, examine, reconstruct and assess. Understanding the critical concern regarding evidence spoliation, Karrie is thoroughly knowledgeable in spoliation prevention and accident scene preservation. Karrie promotes early warning systems for her clients. Proactively counseling organizations in guarding against potential problems, she coordinates expert response teams and company officials. She is a certified instructor for the Department of Homeland Security s National Fire Academy and has presented across the country at numerous seminars, including the National Association of Fire Investigators National Seminar on Fire Analysis Litigation, the International Symposium on Fire Investigation and Science Technology, the IAAI Annual Training Conference and the Natural Gas Claims and Litigation Seminar. Please Submit your Registration Form IAAI Officers Mark Crooks President John Grier 1 st Vice President Becky Nelson 2 nd Vice President Paul O Connell Secretary/Treasurer IAAI Directors David May Jeff Hutcheson Jeff Haler Andrew Burken Greg Siembieda Zack Spykerman Todd Hartzler, Chapter Chaplain The opinions expressed by the Speakers are not necessarily those of the International Association of Arson Investigators or the Iowa Chapter of the IAAI.

Eastern Midwest Service Center

Eastern Midwest Service Center Jonathan J. Jorgensen, IAAI-CFI(V), CVFI Senior Fire Investigator Charleston, WV 304-308-5674 jjorgensen@uis-usa.com EDUCATION: EMPLOYMENT: Columbia Southern University Orange