La Mesa F.D., Insurers Join in Arson Seminar
The La Mesa, Calif., Fire Department and a property insurance company co-sponsored training sessions on arson last May. The two 3 1/2-day sessions were designed to teach insurance claim personnel and underwriters the fundamentals of arson investigation and to polish arson-investigation awareness of the La Mesa fire fighters.
The fire fighters attacked fires set in an office building slated for demolition in La Mesa, but not before the flames had caused extensive damage to the interior of the building. The day after the fires, claims adjusters, underwriters and legal personnel from the Transamerica Insurance Group of Los Angeles poked through the debris to find evidence of arson.
Chief Robert O. Sever of the La Mesa Fire Department said the seminars were “excellent training for our men, too. They . . . learned a great deal about different arson techniques, so they’ll be more alert to the clues of arson in the future.”
More than 150 Transamerica personnel from property claims, underwriting and legal departments throughout the United States at tended the two sessions, held on the fire site in La Mesa and at a San Diego hotel. The students heard day-long lectures on arson motives and techniques, ways to investigate arson, and the legal aspects of the crime.
After investigating the fires, the students returned to their classroom, where James G. Jordan, a senior agent with the Colorado State Bureau of Investigation, tested them and went through the evidence in each of the fires. He pointed out that while much of the evidence is destroyed in the fire or buried in the rubble, a variety of clues remains—color of the smoke, burn patterns, remnants of cloth, pieces of glass or plastic, even charred pieces of matchbooks.
“Nearly all deliberately-set fires,” he said, “leave some clue that is readily apparent to an investigator who knows what to look for.”
