10-18-2012, 09:19 PM
That is crazy.
As to the lack of manpower on it, I wonder what assistance has been requested. Smaller agencies do tend to not want larger ones involved, and the requests may not have been made. But still things do need to move faster, you would think after the first 10 to 20 a larger agency should have been involved somehow. I say that many due to the speed at which they happened, it takes time, unlike some of the movies, to get someone else involved sometimes and that is only a couple of weeks at the pace things went.
It's my understanding that a typical fire investigation can take 40 - 80 man hours. There has to be evidence cataloging and testing of that to get full details to definitively determine cause, and to produce information that some insurance companies want, etc. Only having one person that is trained/responsible for it in a town that size seems low, two or 3 would seem to make sense. The whole "only remaining member" seems to me that it's likely training hasn't happened for others, either because of budget cuts, or because everyone else has been busy fighting/dealing with the aftermath of all the fires and hasn't been able to get away for training since it does take time to train for it. A quick google shows certification courses taking 3 weeks or so, which makes sense.
I do agree that with the changes there is likely a copy cat involved now. That is somewhat typical with most repeated criminal acts, someone else starts to think, "Hey I can do that too!".
I do hope it gets solved soon though. It's fortunate that it's been abandoned stuff and it sounds like the fire dept is keeping them all contained, but fire is tricky unruly stuff and the worry that it spreads and injures/kills someone is understandable.
As to the lack of manpower on it, I wonder what assistance has been requested. Smaller agencies do tend to not want larger ones involved, and the requests may not have been made. But still things do need to move faster, you would think after the first 10 to 20 a larger agency should have been involved somehow. I say that many due to the speed at which they happened, it takes time, unlike some of the movies, to get someone else involved sometimes and that is only a couple of weeks at the pace things went.
It's my understanding that a typical fire investigation can take 40 - 80 man hours. There has to be evidence cataloging and testing of that to get full details to definitively determine cause, and to produce information that some insurance companies want, etc. Only having one person that is trained/responsible for it in a town that size seems low, two or 3 would seem to make sense. The whole "only remaining member" seems to me that it's likely training hasn't happened for others, either because of budget cuts, or because everyone else has been busy fighting/dealing with the aftermath of all the fires and hasn't been able to get away for training since it does take time to train for it. A quick google shows certification courses taking 3 weeks or so, which makes sense.
I do agree that with the changes there is likely a copy cat involved now. That is somewhat typical with most repeated criminal acts, someone else starts to think, "Hey I can do that too!".
I do hope it gets solved soon though. It's fortunate that it's been abandoned stuff and it sounds like the fire dept is keeping them all contained, but fire is tricky unruly stuff and the worry that it spreads and injures/kills someone is understandable.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.