INTERVIEWER: Welcome to the April 2009 CFITrainer.Net podcast. Today we’ll learn more about the new NFPA 921 chapter on marine fire investigations and take a closer look at the myth and reality of static electricity as a source of ignition. Let’s get to it. The new edition of NFPA 921 includes a brand new chapter on marine fire investigation. This new content focuses on fire and explosion investigations involving recreational boats including safety issues due to environmental contaminants and protocols for fire investigators on boats afloat or underwater. The Coast Guard reports over $10 million in damages caused annually by boat fires and explosions on recreational vessels alone. To give us a better idea of why this aspect of fire investigation warrants its own treatment in 921 is Steve Carmen. He’s the President and Owner of Carmen & Associates Fire Investigation. He’s a former ATF CFI, and before working with the ATF he was a Coast Guard Officer for six years. Hi Steve, thanks for joining us.

STEVE: Thank you Rod.

INTERVIEWER: Steve, can you tell us, why do you think the 921 committee felt that marine fire investigations should have their own chapter?

STEVE: Well as you mentioned, the number of marine fires in the United States alone is very high. The losses from these fires can also be higher than normal related to house fires because they have, in many cases, a much higher risk of personal injury then might be the situation with a typical shore based first because if a boat’s at sea and the vessel catches on fire. The problems could be much more catastrophic. So I think the 921 committee decided to take the basic principles outlined in 921 and extend them out to investigators that are facing perhaps their first or even multiple investigation in the marine environment.

INTERVIEWER: In what key ways do marine fires differ from structure fires on land?

STEVE: That’s a tough question. A lot of it depends on where the fire occurs. For instance, there’s all sorts of vessels out there, everything from small recreational boats around ten or fifteen feet long up to the thousand foot long ultra large crude carriers. Each one of these boats has a different type of situation that’s going to affect how fires will spread if they occur and also how they might occur in the first place. So because of that great difference, investigators have to be familiar with a lot of the different types of environments they’re going to be looking at and also the ways in which the different vessels are being used.

INTERVIEWER: Could you give some examples of types of marine investigations based on the smaller or larger size vessels?

STEVE: Well with recreational boats, for instance, the Coast Guard reported that between 1998 and 2007 there were about 1620 fires alone that just involved fuel or fuel systems on the boats. A lot of times these vessels are gasoline powered, they are, in some cases, newer boats that have a lot of the safety systems installed. In other cases you might have older boats that aren’t as well equipped. And then these boats can work in all sorts of environments. They could be involved in generally calm lakes or rivers or they might operate out at sea where you have not only the motion of the sea that can cause vibrations and weaknesses in the boat over time, but you also have the elements of corrosion that can take place. That’s something that doesn’t happen a lot of times with the typical structure fire. These other elements will come into play. Also, a lot of the vessels have DC wiring as well as AC wiring, and as far as an investigation goes, many investigators are typically used to conducting electrical fire scene investigations based on the typical AC wiring.

INTERVIEWER: What unique challenges do marine fires pose for fire investigators?

STEVE: Well, again, the challenges are going to be dependent on a lot of things. Number one, the size and the typical use of the vessel. Modern vessels that are recreational boats are predominantly fiberglass reinforced plastic or wood, some are metal, but in many cases, when those catch fire, you have near total loss. So that’s one type of thing that might happen. Number two is in a small boat like that knowing that the investigation may involve a boat that’s in the water at the time of the fire, the investigator may actually end up having to employ scuba resources or something along those lines in order to get to the remains of the boat.

INTERVIEWER: Steve, could you talk briefly about the additional expertise necessary, and are there safety issues around maritime fire investigations?

STEVE: The safety issues can involve anything from confined space examinations to instability of the boat if it’s still in the water, scuba qualified people to go down and get photos, or in some cases there are investigations, if they’re important enough, such as in fatality fires, have involved underwater robot examination of the boats.

INTERVIEWER: Why don’t you share a story with us about a larger investigation that you’re aware of in the maritime field and some of the challenges that were around that fire investigation.

STEVE: Sure. One example, like you were talking about, of an investigation that occurred on a large ship, was in the early 80s. At the time there was an American tanker called the Puerto Rican that was leaving San Francisco on one Halloween night, and it got offshore from San Francisco and we received a report that there had been an explosion. Well as it turned out, tanker broke in half as a result of the explosion, and the two pieces—the stern portion and the bow portion—both floated for a few days and finally the stern sank, and that was the part that had the pilot house and the accommodation spaces and whatnot. Well the bow remained afloat and it was eventually towed to port, and then the investigation had to figure out why did this vessel explode? Theories ranged from everything to some terrorists had somehow wrapped a detonation cord across the vessel to normal contents that the ship had on board in terms of oils or chemicals that might have led to a flammable mixture, that sort of thing. So what occurs as a result of an investigation like this is that it can reach even to the level of an NTSB investigation of an airliner crash. They’re very complicated, very scientifically and engineering based, and sometimes they’ll take years to accomplish.

INTERVIEWER: So I guess investigators need to follow the scientific method in the water just as they would on land.

STEVE: Absolutely, yeah. The big difference, I would say, is in addition to gathering your data, in the analysis of the data and the development of hypotheses and hypothesis testing, investigators simply have to also be well aware of the nuances of what can happen in the marine environment and how that differs from a shore based situation.

INTERVIEWER: There seem to be interesting challenges to maritime investigations, and we appreciate you sharing your stories and information with us here at the IAAI CFITrainer.Net podcast.

STEVE: One other thing you may want to mention since we’re talking IAAI. IAAI is going to be publishing the users, new users guide to 921.

INTERVIEWER: Thanks Steve. We really appreciate your time.

STEVE: Thank you Rod.

INTERVIEWER: Our major news item for this podcast is the tragic Pizzazz Dog Kennel fire last month in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. During a delivery of propane to the kennel an explosion and devastating fire occurred. The driver of the delivery truck was critically burned and 17 dogs died. One of the possible causes under investigation is static electricity. The science of static electricity and its potency as an ignition source is often poorly understood in the fire investigation community. With us today to shed some light on this subject is Dr. Vahid Ebadat from Chilworth Technology. Dr. Ebadat, thanks for being with us here today. Why don’t we start out with a basic foundation, what is static electricity?

DR. EBADAT: Well I guess in its simplest definition, as the name implies, static electricity is I guess a stationary surplus or deficit of electrical charge

INTERVIEWER: What actions can produce static electricity?

DR. EBADAT: Anytime any two surfaces coming together and separating could generate static charge. If you can imagine, for example, every time you put your foot on a floor and then lift it up, your foot could gain say some negative charges, some electrons, and there will be a deficit of electrons remaining on the carpet. I’d like to also go on to say that when I talk about any two surfaces, I mean surfaces that are either solid or solid liquid or two liquids. In other words, gases, pure gases do not generate static electricity.

INTERVIEWER: As I understand it from aviation, a wing traveling through the air can cause static electricity.

DR. EBADAT: Not quite. It really is the contact between the wings of the aircraft or the aircraft and any liquid droplets that might be in the sky, you know, in the form of a cloud. Or if there are sand particles in the sky. That is what would generate a static charge on the plane. Not just simply air.

INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us about some other misconceptions about static electricity as a source of ignition?

DR. EBADAT: Well like you said, one of them is that something dropping through air would generate a static charge. So a freefall of liquid through air or a freefall of powder through air generating static charge, and that is really not true. One other major, I guess, misconception is that people think that all electrostatic sparks are created equal and they all have the same amount of energy and those static sparks can ignite any flammable atmosphere, and that is just not true. You know, sometimes we go to investigate an explosion that is considered to have been caused by an electrostatic discharge, and we hear people talking about seeing or hearing someone else talking about very large blue arcs and so on, and that is not very often what electrostatic discharges look like.

INTERVIEWER: We’ve all experienced static electricity in our daily lives. I know just walking across the carpet and touching a light switch can give you quite a shock. How dangerous though is it really?

DR. EBADAT: Well through, you know, many years of, I guess, studies and research, we have found that in practice the maximum energy that is sparked from a human body can produce would be around 30 millijoules, okay? Now a 30 millijoule spark is like a bad day getting out of your car, getting a hefty spark from your fingertip when touching the car door. Now in contrast many flammable gases and flammable liquids require less than 1 millijoule of energy tritnite. For example, you know, if you have a barbecue grill that uses propane gas, propane gas, under I guess optimum flammability conditions would require a quarter of 1 millijoule of energy to ignite.

INTERVIEWER: It’s surprising. Static electricity seems to be much more dangerous than many of us realize.

DR. EBADAT: Again, it is not so much the spark itself being that hazardous, but it is when you put the spark, where there is a flammable atmosphere.

INTERVIEWER: How does static electricity initiate an explosion and fire?

DR. EBADAT: Well very often what happens is that you are left somewhere with an ungrounded metal section or you have a plastic pipe or a plastic container or a plastic bag or liner or indeed a person who is wearing shoes with insulating soles, you know, like trainers, for example, sneakers. Now if those types of objects become electrostatically charged up by being rubbed, for example, by another object, then at some point it’s possible that an electrostatic discharge would result. If, at the same, at the same place, you have a flammable gas or solvent vapor atmosphere or sometimes indeed a dust cloud atmosphere, there’s a possibility that the discharge would have enough energy to ignite that atmosphere.

INTERVIEWER: We can all imagine the vapors of gas igniting, but can you share with us an example or where we wouldn’t have expected static electricity was the ignition source.

DR. EBADAT: Yes, people know about, you know, as far as gas stations and sparks igniting gasoline vapors, but I would say there are times when electrostatic discharges, for example, from the surface of a powder that is being processed in a plant could ignite it’s own dust clouds. For example, one could be transferring a powder into a silo, into the hopper or into a bag or container and the static charge buildup on the powder is so high that a discharge from the surface of the powder will ignite the dust, it was February or 2008. We read about a huge sugar dust explosion at Imperial Sugar in Georgia, and you know, many people would be surprised to hear that common powders that one could be handling in one’s kitchen could be quite explodable, and some of those powders under the right condition could be ignited by sparks of static electricity.

INTERVIEWER: Are there ever markings or patterns that might be visible that would tell an investigator that a fire was ignited by static electricity?

DR. EBADAT: In fact, the problem with static electricity very often is that static electricity probably is the least traceable of all ignition sources compared to many other ignition sources. So the problem that you’ve had in the past is that an investigator going to the scene of an incident and after exhausting all possible ignition sources and not having been able to come up with a viable ignition sources, the tendency is to say well we couldn’t find any ignition source, so it must have been static electricity. However, if you go to the scene of an explosion or flash fire and you see the person involved in the fire having worn say sneakers, if you see plastic objects nearby, if you do some electrical testing and you find some ungrounded equipment and so on, these are basically the clues for whether or not static electricity could have played a role in that incident.

INTERVIWER: What laboratory testing is available to assist in making the determination of whether or not static electricity was the cause of a fire?

DR. EBADAT: Well there’s many laboratory tests that would help in the investigation of electrostatic ignition sources. There are tests that, for example, one can conduct to see how much static charge can build up on a person as he or she walks on a specific surface or when he or she takes her winter coat off or sweater off or lab coat off. There are static tests that one could conduct to see how much charge is generated, if a liquid is being pulled out of a pump or a container, or indeed, if you are pouring powder from a bag or from a scoop, one could quantify the level of static charge that is generated under those conditions. One could also determine how long static charge could sit on a surface, and one could definitely determine the energy or igniting power of a discharge that would result. One could also determine how easily a given flammable atmosphere can be ignited by specific electrostatic discharges.

INTERVIEWER: Thanks Dr. Ebadat. All of us from the IAAI CFITrainer.Net are grateful for the time you spent with us today sharing your expertise.

DR. EBADAT: Well certainly it’s been my pleasure and I should also mention that, you know, we do not charge for telephone conversation and we very often encourage investigators who have interest in cases to just pick up the phone and give us a call.

INTERVIEWER: Wow, it’s nice of you to make yourself that available to an investigator. Thanks Dr. Ebadat. All of us from the IAAI and CFITrainer.Net are grateful for your time and expertise.

DR. EBADAT: It’s been my pleasure. Bye-bye.

INTERVIEWER: Finally, let’s turn our attention to a couple of announcements from the IAAI. Time is running short to register for the IAAI Annual Training Conference in Arlington, Texas from May 17th through the 23rd. More than 300 investigators from around the world have already registered for this event, which is the premier networking and professional development opportunity for fire, arson and explosive investigators. Presenters include Dr. John DeHaan, Dr. David Icove, Dr. David Howitt, Daniel Madrzykowksi of NIST, and renowned Texas Rangers criminal investigation experts. To register, please visit firearson.com or contact Deb Bell at 410-451-3473. Voting for the election of IAAI officers and board members as well as an amendment to the IAAI bylaws has begun and will run through noon central daylight time on Tuesday, May 19th. You can vote online in the members section of the IAAI website at www.firearson.com. IAAI is also establishing a speakers bureau of members who are willing to volunteer their time to assist in the professional development of fire and arson investigator colleagues around the nation and the world. To register, you need to be a member of the IAAI. Applications are available in the members only section of the IAAI website at www.firearson.com. That concludes our time for this CFITrainer.Net podcast. We’ll see you next month.