At the beginning of this year, the Fire Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Emergency Management released the 2020 National Fire and Fire Rescue Team Response Situation. Relevant notification data show that in 2020, a total of 252,000 fires were reported nationwide, with 1,183 deaths, 775 injuries, and direct property losses of 4.009 billion yuan.
After the fire breaks out, fire rescue personnel will come to fight it as soon as possible. After the fight, a special group of firefighters will return to the fire. They started from every small detail in the ruins, followed the trail, restored the passage, stripped away the cocoon, and found the "culprit" of the fire. All this is not only to explore the truth behind the fire, but also to let people learn from it and avoid the recurrence of similar fires. They are fire scene investigators, and people often refer to them as the "Sherlock Holmes" of the fire scene.
What kind of person can become a fire scene investigator? How did the fire dispatchers find the cause of the fire from the ruins and walls after the fire? On December 13, Tianyan News reporters walked into the Guiyang Fire Rescue Detachment and listened to senior fire investigators tell stories about them.
Li Yingli, who is investigating the cause of the fire
Fire Investigator This position is not simple
On December 10, 2021, in a residential area of Yunhuan Road, Baiyun District, Guiyang City, Li Yingli and colleagues in the fire adjustment team were conducting a fire cause investigation. Every word spoken by the witnesses, every overheated object at the scene, ashes on the ground, smoke marks on the walls... Every detail, they will not ignore.
The day before, a fire broke out in a local self-built house, because it was put out in time, the fire did not cause casualties, and the property damage was not large. However, it is the responsibility of Li Yingli and his colleagues to find out the cause of the fire and give the residents an explanation.
Li Yingli, 37 years old this year, is currently the third-level commander of the professional and technical rescue brigade of Baiyun District, Guiyang City. In addition to carrying out daily fire prevention supervision in the jurisdiction, the usual work responsibilities also undertake the investigation task of the fire scene.
In 2005, after graduating from the Armed Police College in Langfang, Hebei Province, Li Yingli went to Honghe, Yunnan Province, to work as a border guard for two years. After being transferred back to his hometown of Guiyang, he successively served as a grass-roots squadron leader, instructor, and fire prevention supervisor in the Guanshanhu District and Baiyun District Fire Rescue Brigade.
For the fire investigator, Li Yingli said that this is one of the most technically demanding jobs in the fire rescue team. "Fire dispatchers must not only have excellent professional knowledge, strong communication skills, meticulous and meticulous logical thinking skills, but also have enough patience and care, and can not let go of any detail in the fire field." Especially in recent years, with the development of science and technology, photography and video, video analysis, graphic drawing, etc. have also become the basic skills that a fire adjuster must master. ”
"New technologies and means are emerging in an endless stream, and the causes of fires are also strange. If you want to be a good fire scene investigator, you also need to continue to learn and constantly enrich yourself. Li Yingli said.
Li Yingli at work
Find the reason for the fire, and also talk about "looking, smelling, asking, cutting"
After a fire, people often ask, what caused the fire to occur? But in the face of the mess at the scene of the fire, ordinary people can be said to be helpless. So, how does the fire dispatcher come to peel off the cocoon?
In this regard, Li Yingli said that the fire scene investigation, like the traditional Chinese medicine medical treatment, also pays attention to a "look, smell, ask, cut". "Hope" refers to the fire dispatcher after arriving at the fire site, will repeatedly investigate the traces of the fire site, looking for valuable clues; "smell" refers to the extraction of fire residues, analysis and testing; "ask" refers to asking the alarm, witnesses and other relevant personnel, to understand the fire and abnormal situation, to grasp whether there are people in the fire site before the fire or inflammable and explosive materials, etc.; and "cut" refers to the comprehensive analysis of the video, pictures, physical evidence identification results in and around the fire site, and finally draw conclusions.
If you take a real fire as an example, after the fire is extinguished, the scene will generally be temporarily blocked. After the fire dispatcher arrives, he will first discharge the outside of the fire field to avoid secondary accidents. Subsequently, experienced fire investigators will ask witnesses, etc., to understand and collect basic information about the fire. Next, they will carry out on-site investigation from the outside to the inside, make drawings to restore the scene in a plane, take photos to collect evidence, look for suspicious items that cause fires, and send them to the relevant departments for identification. After the identification results are released, a closed chain of evidence is formed and a fire accident certificate is issued.
"Fire scene investigation is a very rigorous process, and we must not be preconceived. Every fire investigation conclusion made by the fire department is the result of multi-faceted evidence collection and multi-channel support. For example, if a short circuit of a wire causes a fire, not only will the short-circuited wire have fused marks, but there must also be combustible materials nearby. The initial ignition point should also be the core point in the fire field, and the degree of damage to its items will be more serious than other areas, and these details are interlocked! Li Yingli told reporters.
Crouch in ruins for a week just to find clues
In the past 10 years of fire adjustment work, Li Yingli has participated in the investigation of hundreds of fire accidents. What impressed him most was a logistics warehouse fire that occurred in the Guanshanhu District of Guiyang City in February 2014.
"The fire was very large, the fire area was more than 5,000 square meters, the property loss was more than 40 million yuan, and the fire rescue personnel fought for more than 20 hours to completely extinguish the fire!" Li Yingli said. Because the fire warehouse involved more owners, in order to find out the cause of the fire and give an explanation to the damaged owners, Li Yingli and his colleagues rushed into the scene. At the same time, the Provincial Fire Rescue Corps and the Guiyang Detachment also sent experts to reinforce. Guiyang after the Spring Festival is still very cold, they stay in the ruins of the fire site for more than 10 hours a day, their hands are frozen red.
Li Yingli represented Guizhou in the national competition
In order to find witnesses, Li Yingli and his colleagues have questioned 37 relevant personnel and repeatedly asked about some situations at the scene and around the scene before the fire. During the on-site investigation, in the face of a large number of items that were destroyed by the fire, they had to clean up one by one and look for the area that caught fire first. After more than a week of continuous work, traces of the scene gradually led them to the ruins that first caught fire.
After eliminating other possible causes of fire one by one, a short circuit in the wire became the biggest possibility. However, circuit breaks usually occur after a short circuit, and the beads formed after the wire is found at the scene are the strongest evidence. In order to find the molten beads, Li Yingli and his companions used a thin sieve to sift through a large amount of ashes on the ground in the core area of the fire field several times, although they could not find the molten beads, but sifted out a small piece of wire residue. After identification, this wire residue is in line with the relevant characteristics of the wire short circuit fire and fuse, and the residual wire and a large amount of peripheral auxiliary evidence can be determined that the warehouse fire was caused by the short circuit of the wire.
"If we compare the scene of a fire to a crime scene, we are acting as a forensic doctor!" Li Yingli said.
Urban News
Guizhou Daily Tianyan news reporter Ren Yong
Intern Li Ya
Edited by Zhang Hong, Hu Lan
Editor Liu Gang Shi Yuling