If you have had a suspicious fire at your home, business, or rental property you need to be positive as to the cause. Hiring a private fire investigator from ICS will ensure that you know exactly what happened. Arson accounts for billions of dollars in property losses each year to the public and private sectors and is often discovered to be a crime of revenge. Be completely sure that it was not an act of vengeance, because if it was it will most likely not stop there. Professional arsonists are experienced at staging fires to look like accidents, and foul play may not be detected through a cursory investigation conducted by your local fire department. Private fire investigators use a plethora of cutting edge techniques to discover the cause of your fire.

 Your private fire investigator will:

• Process the physical scene by examining the structure or scene for fire patterns and evidence.
• Collect evidence such as glass, metal, charred wood, and accelerant residue for use in determining the cause of a fire.
• Test the materials collected to establish facts, such as burn patterns and flash points of materials, using state-of-the-art test equipment.
• Photograph damage and evidence related to the cause of the fire to document investigation findings.
  

Despite a fire investigator’s best effort, a definitive cause of a fire may never be isolated due to lack of physical evidence. In these cases, investigators use “Negative Corpus.” This is not a legal term, but a reference made within the fire fighting community. It refers to the practice of eliminating all other possible accidental sources of the fire, leaving the one cause that they submit as the most likely source of the fire. Insurance companies will often pay based on this “Negative Corpus” deductive reasoning, since no proof of any other fire cause exists.

Some of the signs of arson that investigators look for include:

• Large amount of damage
• Low burning with an unidentifiable point of origin
• No "V" burn patterns present, unusual burn patterns and high heat stress
• Lack of accidental causes
• Separate and unconnected fires
• Windows blown away from structure
• Evidence of forced entry
• Missing inventory in businesses, and missing personal items in a home
• "For sale" signs in the yard
• Fire extending beyond the perimeter of the structure

After the investigation, the professional you have hired from ICS will provide reliable, expert testimony in any court cases that may arise from your fire, whether it be to help you collect your insurance claim, or to assist in the prosecution of the arsonist who set the fire. Don’t rely on an overworked public servant to conduct a thorough investigation of arson.  Call ICS as soon as possible, it will be much easier for us to perform an accurate investigation while the evidence is still fresh and tampered with as little as possible.

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