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Palm Beach County Fire Rescue's newest firefighter was only on the job for one day, but it was a visit. This V I p won't soon forget Fire nets Robin Barrack has more. It was one of the many workdays Bob Graham is famous for getting hands on experience by doing a job.

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So when the senator reported for duty at Palm Beach County Fire Rescue headquarters, he had his work cut out for him. A day spent learning firsthand about firefighting and investigations, I became interested in learning more about how do you go about investigating a fire to determine whether it was arson or not?

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And then, if you determined it's arson, how would you then go from there to try to find out who had committed the crime? I talked with Chief Bryce a few weeks ago, and he offered me the opportunity to spend a day here with Palm Beach County Fire Department in order to learn more about the how arson is investigated.

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And today was an outstanding learning experience for me. First, a quick overview of the day's activities, including participation in a live fire drill and a subsequent investigation. Today we were dealing with a training fire that is one that was set on purpose in order to serve as a means of learning.

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It was a pretty real live example of what might have happened in a in an actual arson circumstance. And I think with what evidence we were able to develop and gather that there would have been a very good chance that we could have built a case beyond reasonable doubt as to who had committed this crime.

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Even though Senator Graham has a pretty good idea of what to expect, the day was still full of surprises. I knew how tough the job of a firefighter was. I have worked with the firefighters and a number of communities in Florida. This is my first time in Palm Beach County.

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Uh, but today was the first time that I put on the full suit and went into a burning house, and I got a new appreciation. And I now understand why firefighters one of the most dangerous professions in the whole country, it's It's extremely dangerous work hot the dark.

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Uh, your adrenaline is really pumping. I came away with a great renewed appreciation for the service that firefighters perform to our communities. All in. All of the senator says he learned a lot about firefighting investigations and teamwork. Yeah, One of the other things that was impressive today was that this is not an individual effort, a single person.

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Uh, and it's not a single agency. The Palm Beach Fire District. The sheriff's office. Uh, the state fire marshal and, uh, the federal alcohol Firearms in tobacco agencies were all involved Indians, and they each bring a certain expertise, a certain amount of equipment, uh, and experience to this task.

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And as everyone said, having all those agencies working together is not, uh, piling on. It's not redundant. Uh, it adds to the strength of the team to be able to figure out just what happened, Uh, and be the most effective in terms of building a case to make an eventual arrest and conviction.

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Robin barrack for fire net. I'm here until you're all about. Yeah, I came off magic that around here. I'm going to watch this one. I'm going to get anybody shot. Excuse me. Choose to write it up a little higher than you think. Yeah, when I checked with fries.

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Yeah. How many people in your life. Uh, restrict here. Hopefully that stand straight back. No, I don't have a problem with them. Here and there. Wait for people up there. We go under. Definitely. No. So you think this? Yeah. Yeah. Get around Magnetic with a lot of our feeling.

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Okay, You've got ready. Yeah, Correct, Al, By the way, you feel? Uh huh. The lighting at night. You got a lot of stuff. I'm not sure about the Rio Grande as well as you can. It's not a good naked bar attack. One radio check, please. Alright.

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Tattoo ready? Check, please. That's good. Have an intervention. Radio check. Places, friend Cappie. Yeah, I'm just gonna do it. And this flare? Yeah. I love my mhm helmet. Look at that. The president There was an interesting thing to build a president. Yeah. Mhm. You pay for this?

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Yeah. I don't know about that Shit. Flash. You get the arm for you. Yeah. Okay. The title. Here, Jack. Mhm. Uhh! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Information. Mhm. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Okay. Mhm or something? Yeah. One of the people in that ballpark. Yeah. We'll be safe under here.

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I said we'll be nice and safe. under here. Just two birds with one stone. Just won't hear anything. Mhm. Hello? Yeah, for it explodes. Is that so? That's close. Yeah, with pleasure. Over. Well, I see it. We should from the door, right? It's been like this.

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I'm on the door, and yet it has the door. He didn't understand If you think it's bad to me. Oh, good. Get the door open for long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mhm. Mhm, Yeah, yeah, yeah Mhm, Mhm, Mhm, Mhm, Yeah, yeah. Stand in front. I just I'm giving a pill for no good.

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Plus Thanks. Okay, right. Take it off. Do it. In fact, uh huh. Hey, we're shooting here. Thank you. Mhm. Uh huh. People today? Yeah. I don't know. Online board. Mhm. Sure. Do you want firefighters in this shot, sheriff? Thanks. Yeah, Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Still giving me a call.

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Came over Mhm. Yeah, the place. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Mhm. How you doing? I don't know that Start. Yeah, Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. I want to be working. Yeah, you're gonna get everybody terrible. Uh huh. And what are you taking for them yourself? Yeah. Mhm. Mhm.

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Yes. Probably five. Carmelita. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. me, I think. Mhm. Yeah, Yeah. Okay. Mhm. Yeah, yeah. Going in front protection. Mhm. Right. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, yeah! Mhm! Mhm. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Come on. Okay. Yeah, You're talking. You want to interview our Alright, This run, We're coming to you.

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Yeah, yeah. Mhm. Mhm, Yeah. Mhm. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Oh, damn, Yeah! Mhm. Yeah, That's the plan on the floor. Yeah, What we need Yeah, yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, I don't think Fight. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Get their people. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, Yeah. All right. Mhm. Mhm.

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Mhm. Yeah! All right. Everyone has not done that. Thank you. Yeah, Yeah, yeah! Mm, yeah, yeah. Uh huh, Yeah, That's family do in the new helmet McQueen suit. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah Okay, Yeah, Mhm yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Mhm, Yeah, I had a surgery. Yeah, yeah, yeah! Mhm.

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Mhm. Yeah, yeah. How much money? Yeah, Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, I don't know. Mhm. Yeah, yeah. Yes, Harry. Okay. Take time out. I got more on the case. What's going on? I get your name, but it's in the case. Yeah. Yeah. Carol. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Okay.

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Yeah, yeah. Copy. All right, Jack. What did you copy? We got involvement in the land. 25. 31 11 out. He's just about got enough to go ahead and check. Well, is it raining? Thank you. It's just a five minute blank. I'll shoot until it goes out.

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And actually the flame tree and stuff. You know what? They hold them all together a couple of Okay. I'm gonna come all over in a second. Hey, Gatorade. Um, okay. Vegetable is the best car market. Little white people, 2.3 miles from my pocket every day. The churches.

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Yeah. I have nobody to take Saturday with nobody on my side. Something mhm. Mhm, Yeah. Shaking some hands and stuff like that. Yeah. Your point. Yeah. Wait. I get all that stuff. Look out. Dirty. This thing is brand new. That's a sign of a firefighter. A good shot.

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That's a good shot. Okay. All right. I do. It's another indicator of the place that we're going to look. There's another element of probable cause. It's also another element of an area where we want to take a sample and find out if this may be something like a vehicle, particularly by the rocker panel.

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because it's the lowest area and the fumes is actually burn. Gasoline itself will not burn fumes. Problem. So you want to go to an area where those fumes are going to be accredited? Get down in the area that falls in line with any confessional material refused and also to the floor will flush the floor all the way down with a fire hose that will look for accelerate patterns and staying on the floor.

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You also look in the room to try to find another burn pattern that would not be linked to that which would indicate one an intentional so far, because you have two areas of wars. And if you do find, say, if we found a burn area over that you check such and such, you say I didn't check that particular outlets or they're going to say, How do you know that the fire didn't start?

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How can you farm south? And also I have to do is put in that reasonable doubt you've lost the criminal trial again. What I told you about the civil trial, the soul trial is different because you only have to prove that 51%. So you still have the ability.

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If you don't, then only the civil mhm. If you are in this room, I want to show Why don't we go ahead and look through? The whole thing are standing out front. They got their insurance policy in her hand. Uh huh. You know, that's we look for valuables.

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Personal, sentimental things like pictures. Uh, anything that may be clothing, anything that may be in danger and stuff that would normally be found in the house if it's missing in order. All of these things are circumstantial indicators that base are going towards based on the case of arson.

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Um, all of the damage over here is high. Basically, you'll see. See the pattern on that desk? It sounds like a flaky pattern that's almost like the heat was so intense right there. That level was just begging that finish on. Okay. Desk itself, causing it to blister like that, which is indicative of a high temperature fire as well.

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Um, all this stuff over here, of course, we're gonna have to check this air conditioner and everything. You have to understand that when we do our initial assessment and we're coming through and showing you this stuff like this, we do this pretty happen. We're not. It doesn't take us as long as we walk in.

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First thing I saw when I walked in with this and we'll burn down here and you notice the charring to the baseboard down here, all of that stuff. We note that, and within 23 minutes we can walk through here and tell you the area where the fire occurred, what separate points of origin you may have had and things like that.

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We're taking a lot of time to explain things to you that this is stuff that we need to go back and take our time. Take the samples, photographs, photographs, sketches. All this kind of stuff has to be done tragic, and we'll do it. We take our time.

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And if you understand you asked a question before about how long it takes to piracy, My answer was, it's based on each individual situation, because we've had large commercial losses that have occurred that have been huge monetary losses by the size of the building and contents and things like that.

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It may take days. We may have to bring in bobcats and dig through the debris and sift through the debris. It could be days, but you can have some situations where a situation that you have in each particular instance okay him over here. You see the same thing.

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We're basically intact over here, but burned away here. You've got charring at the upper level and you've got some trying based on at the floor area down here. But this one is not as bad as what you had at this one over here. So whatever was burning across the floor through here didn't have as much heat horse in relation to this chair as it didn't happen.

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Okay, poor exposure to come down here in the framework. He doesn't see how the plane is. So what we do is we had fire coming around the form and see how it see how the pattern paint has burned away on this wall here. But it's still here.

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You can see where it's wrapping around the wall and wrapping right through here and missing this door completely as it wraps through here. And it's catching the upper level over here and going into this room. Now there's a good indication of dry walls We'll probably take a sample right there.

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And generally what we do in a situation like this, we'll take a sample there if we feel that's an accelerant, and then we'll take an unexposed area and take a control sample of unexposed areas to show that that carpet does not have a normal, normal content that this has.

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But you can see up here. Remember, in the one room we showed where the fan actually had the blades burned away and everything In this particular case, the blades are still intact, but they're sad. So you're starting to be 15 if it's not accelerated. Accelerated fire.

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You're looking at probably to 2500 degrees at the ceiling level. Fire hazardous. Anybody that has to do. Yes, you were in here and down here. Yes, we put into it like now it's on the only small recap from this clear sessions and they've already checked and make sure because those questions are not enough.

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If you increase the success, they check, wasn't it? Yeah, first production, but we'd be looking at that kind of self if it wasn't expect to see is involved were doing. Since this is television on most hazardous at that point in time. Because you don't have full combustion, you have the smoke that's being generated, especially if it's coming from the foam mattresses PVC pipe.

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I would have a toxic fumes. They are more out to just close it an investigation. So it's pretty hazards time. And this time we have to handle their hair masks. And we haven't thrown air packs among the building. We just have to wait. Sometimes we wait for our people mhm and be ready service marks in the industry.

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This is a that's all based on that moisture content build up here, because you've got more ground you're really smelling here. It's heavy in here. Look here. Remember what we were talking about trailers and the possibility of having a lot of cases the way to close itself as they become superheated will cause that whole rocket fall to the floor.

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And then we have a whole series of clothes on lower levels of the closet itself, and they can then be taken out individually and you kind of what kind of clothes they had, what they look like. They have a good one just stop in the country what it has.

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A lot of times, I think people do. They'll come in and take all the good stuff out. Don't go to the Goodwill and they'll make a catch point. I never read anything. Another thing we're going to check if you'll notice. Here. We've got that in my whole family now.

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Yeah, I'm plugging everything. You got it? Just coming down here. You want to look at the So I also want to look at what the inside of here? Because this very well could be selling. Trying to make this look like the kitchen floor. We've also got an indication that the ovens on broil and we've got one of the top burners is in the number six position.

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Yeah. Now, the next thing we have to do is show why the fire didn't originate from the stove and that being it may well have. They may have turned the stove on and had an accelerant inside that can be used as a delay. And that may be where the original fire heard that spread to everything else.

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It may have been a time to light type of thing to set it up to give them an ability to tonight that spread to the other areas and get to the fumes and everything to build up inside the house and and spread through the house. In this particular case, we're going to roll out the oven because it was a condemned structure and there was no power to the structure, so the oven could have been on in the first place to take this off.

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Super Bowl Take care of all the liquid. Yeah, they can prove every passing. Right now there's different ways they can take a light bulb and a syringe filled with all this gasoline right towards the source of fire figured so much that it won't fit through the opening of the ball glass bowl.

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I can't really see. Put it back up and break. Doma break Globe off. Turnabout Time delays is really neat. Thing to do is take a candle entire balloon with gasoline in it and you tie it the strength and swinging and it swings back and forth gives you 15 20 minutes ago, and it slows down when it comes to the top of the candle and the cast rooms inside expand to the point that the balloon hits that it's Cameron first gasoline.

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Another one is to take a cigarette and put it in a lit cigarette. Put it inside a pack, matches. I just like the cigarette and leave it there. And as it burns down against the matches matches, so there's all kinds of ways that you want to want to do it.

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So okay, it looks like everything in this room, basically so far on initial examination, is all exposure. We've eliminated this because of the fact that there was no electrical, so you can't have had a fire there. So initially before we start processing, it looks like back there and then be a non communicating second point of origin.

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Or we may find a trailer from all the way through and went into this bedroom. We've got severe damage in this bedroom, which is clearly a second separate point of origin. Yeah, the pattern on the door refrigerator, too. Let's just say it's burned all the way to the floor down here that inverted V on the front, and also we'll see heavy char damage all the way.

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The floor here, which is indicative of fire, clear down, which isn't common and the bacteria charge heaviest here. That papers off until it gets very down. Sure beats source where the home is playing after alone who also noticed this side has a deeper depth of charge.

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And that's I mean, that's a subjective president. Can you talk about it because, you know, you drive by car? Yeah. Here. How the normal tensile strength would be. Look at how these have lost their tensile strength. Which means they were subjected to the high really great defeat at that particular thing, which is called the feeling of strength that gives you communication.

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Something on the bed has occurred that there it could be. It was just flowing. Yeah, Mhm. Mhm particular particular more damage This and almost like sex. This village you got to this he's got You have to figure out whether wind direction had played. I was keeping it in this particular end, and in this case, you get the wind coming through this window.

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Now, that's another thing you look at. You look at our weather direction and more flexible as well. So if the direction is coming in, this right was set. Of course, the center of the soul pull that back then the wind direction to keep it this way and spread it as you'll notice the army of this bad is gone.

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Also take from the from the implosive No one dragon evidence over a place that hasn't been done yet. Yeah, you're gonna this material, you know we can going to take a sample. What? Just usually by hand, Just get down there. Just You're starting to see some right in here.

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Mhm. This is anything is unusual. You want to look at? We know from our original walk around that we've gotten so we're probably taking a nap in that area. It looks like a carpet. So you would cut. Cut that out of the floor. Uh, it doesn't put it in here.

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What we would do, Whoever science and somebody particularly they don't have 15 people taking photographs. You come in to get down to the floor and go ahead and take your evidence Can and you have to label specific things. Put the case number