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Working on a screenplay or story with crashes, fires, or other physical accident events
and want some reality infused in the writing? If you have a fire or accident related
question or two, we will gladly provide answers at no charge. Mr. Williams is a writer and
is also available for hire as a technical advisor on these areas of expertise for larger
productions. For contact information click here.
Let's Get Real
Writers are wise to write what they
know, but how many writers have killed someone with a 9mm pistol, or set fire to a church,
or faked a car crash? Not many, one would guess. Considering all the crime novels, TV
shows, and movies out there, this is a very good thing.
Yet writers must tackle
these and other difficult subjects all the time - hopefully after doing some research.
Unfortunately though, there
are far too many books, TV show plots and movies which simply don't get their facts
straight, with situations forcefully contrived to fit the crime details. This is sloppy,
lazy writing.
The sad part is that it
isn't even necessary. It is possible to get it accurate and make it
interesting and exciting. All you need to do is ask someone who knows.
What do the following words
have in common?:
Arson, murder, extortion, fraud, kinky sex, lies, accidents, corruption, incompetence,
deception, strippers, strip clubs, bias, irresponsibility, death, trauma, serious injury,
destruction, crashes, fires, nudity, tragedy, grief, revenge, vice, greed, adultery, total
loss, pain, the legal system, wealth, juvenile delinquents, sexual fetishes, movie stars,
celebrities, crime, blood, terror.
These subjects make great
fodder for creative writing, yes? But no, that's not the answer. The answer is that this
is a list of just a few components of real life cases investigated by Jeff
Williams in the past 25 years. As you can see, fire and crash investigation is not a dry
subject. The circumstances of many of these real cases are far more interesting than plots
(which too often have no basis in fact at all) dreamed up by some of today's writers. If
the real McCoy is so dramatic, what's the point in making anything up?
If you're a writer, you owe it to yourself to get your facts straight, to describe
procedures and/or techniques properly and use them cleverly in the plot. In doing so you
will demonstrate that you have done your research, and that you are clearly interested in
getting it right. Your work will have legitimacy, and - more important - believability.
There's Real Life Fires -
and Then There's Hollywood
The quest for realism on TV and movies
has lead many screenwriters and producers to re-enact crimes in detail.
Since the crimes themselves
are not always that interesting due to poorly-written stories in general, some directors
use creative license in their methods to spice things up; for instance, there are a lot of
exploding cars on TV shows, but real-life auto explosions are very rare, not always as
dramatic, and very difficult to accomplish 'accidentally'.
In the majority of films
and TV dramas, 'arson' fires are typically handled with all the grace of a rhino on
barbituates, with very little adherence to reality. The field of fire investigation is
apparently one where few scriptwriters dare to venture since so few people understand
it. But when they do, the result is nearly always a blindfolded stumble into the
dark side and a frustrating embarassment to anyone with fire investigation experience.
Evidence is typically
contrived to fit the plot, buzz words used in fire investigation are indiscriminately and
erroneously tossed about with an air of authority, and fire investigation techniques are
largely ignored or mis-represented. With this preface, we now turn our attention to the
current diva of distortion, 'CSI'.
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The TV
crime series 'CSI' ventures occasionally into the arson field, with consistently
incredible results.
This show deserves a critical appraisal since it's SUPPOSED to be more reality-based, and
many people apparently think the show is an accurate portrayal of 'forensics'.
It's not. But it's hot.
The bottom line, though, is that it's still Hollywood, so why do we even expect accuracy
at all? Well, how about something merely reasonable, then?
Their writers make the big bucks, so a little research might be expected. Right?
Wrong. |
When it
comes to fire investigation, 'CSI' is about as accurate as vote counting in Florida
elections.
In the following three stories, nearly every
aspect of fire investigation is wrong. Nearly every piece of fire-related dialogue is
wrong.
The writers clearly need a fire consultant. The irony here is that real life fire
investigations can often be far more interesting than anything these writers can make up.
Fahrenheit 932
A man is in the slammer for the arson murders of his wife and son, and contacts the CSI's
top forensic investigator, Grissom, to help him. The man was known to have purchased
gasoline the week before the fire, and he was observed fleeing the scene. While these two
facts alone seemed to be flimsy evidence for a conviction, there he was in jail.
Amazingly enough though, with each passing commercial the guy looked more guilty.
A half dozen "arson investigators" had already turned the accused down for help
(maybe for good reason?). Grissom, by the way, was not a fire investigator, so
it's unclear why CSI would even be involved in an origin and cause investigation in the
first place.
The man explains to Grissom that the fire began late at night in the couple's bedroom
closet in his nice large suburban house. He at first claims that he came home from buying
ice cream to find smoke billowing out the back of the house. He explains that a
"flashover" had occurred in the bedroom (he's a volunteer firefighter, you see,
and he knows these things).
Although he tried to hide it from Grissom, the man had burned his hand horribly
("third degree burns" we learn - hey, that's charred skin!) on the door
knob and was blown back by a fireball as he opened the bedroom door from the hallway. The
flashover prevented him from entering and saving his wife and young son. He even knew
the temperature of the fire - 932 degrees Fahrenheit, because that's the temperature,
we're told, that flashover occurs!
Flashover, in real life, is a transitional phase in fire development and does not occur at
such a specific temperature, though research has shown that flashover typically
occurs when temperatures in a room reach or exceed approximately 1100 degrees
Fahrenheit. Generally speaking, flashover is defined as the stage of the fire when every
exposed combustible in a room has caught on fire.
Investigators found remains of a flammable liquid in the closet. With a good analysis a
chemist will be able to tell specifically what was used (whether it be gasoline, kerosene,
diesel, methanol, acetone, etc.). The script mentioned gasoline, but on the show the more
generic term "hydrocarbons" was used so that viewers would be kept in the dark
about what the fuel really was.
Enter our forensic heroes, the CSI team, to the rescue. They discover a
mysteriously-charred (?) board at the top of the bedroom door frame, and a burned
"industrial grade high voltage" electric space heater discarded and thrown into
the living room during overhaul by the fire department.
Displaying his amazing skill in logical deduction, Grissom reasons that the heater had
to have been plugged in to the closet outlet in the couple's bedroom because "that's
the one closest to her bed". Yes, that's what he said.
Why he assumed that the heater had to be plugged in at all, anywhere, we're not
told. And Grissom never questioned why, if it was so cold that a heater was necessary, the
accused would be out buying ice cream at midnight.
Grissom and his crack team later observe that the bedroom wiring's circuit breaker had
tripped in the electrical panel - conclusive evidence to them that the circuit had "overloaded".
In real life, finding tripped breakers is not unusual, and doesn't necessarily indicate
that an electrical fire has even occurred; this also happens when electrical components
are merely exposed to a fire.
They later find melted glass fragments on the closet floor.
What could possibly explain all these new clues which had supposedly been previously
overlooked by the CSI guy originally assigned to the case? BTW, the original
investigator determined that the guy was guilty, so the scriptwriters made this co-worker
of Grissom a major jerk.
In a startling admission from the accused (with a flashback), Grissom discovers that, on
the night of the fire, the man had argued with his wife in their bedroom over a new woman
in his life (Grissom!! Hello?!). The son was nowhere to be seen in this scene, but
for plot convenience he reportedly hadn't been able to sleep and was supposedly in the
couple's bed trying to get some shuteye during their shouting bout!
In her anger, his wife began flinging available small potential projectiles at her
philandering hubby. One of the objects thrown was a hefty glass kerosene lamp which missed
him but shattered against a closet wall and spilled its flammable contents. This is also
one important detail the accused has forgotten to tell Grissom about until late in the
episode. And it also explains why we're told initially only that the lab found
"hydrocarbons", since gasoline is not kerosene lamp oil - though both are
hydrocarbon fuels.
The accused says he left home and drove off after the argument. But after mulling it over
it a bit, he decided to turn around and try to salvage his 10 year marriage. He returned
less than 20 minutes later, in shame - only to find the house on fire.
A lot happened in that 20 minutes - according, again, to Grissom's unique
perspective. Immediately after the man left the house, the heater had coincidentally
overloaded the circuit, sparked out the outlet in the closet where it was plugged in, and
ignited the kerosene fumes in the closet.
For some reason, the wife and son had done nothing to clean up the spilled kerosene before
the fire, or escape the bedroom once the fire began, and they presumably died of poisoning
by carbon monoxide (a fire by-product), which takes time to accumulate. What were
they doing while the fire was building in their room? Were they asleep? If so,
how did they fall asleep so quickly? (remember that the 8 year old was in their room
because he couldn't sleep!) Were they conscious through all this? (pssst,
Grissom.... these are clues!)
So what else is wrong with this sad plot? Actually, very little was right, but
there's simply not enough time to cover it all. Nearly every fire-related
comment in this show was inaccurate in one way or another.
Although "flashover" is mentioned several times (it's clear that the
scriptwriter had confused a 'flashover' with a 'backdraft' - another fire event entirely),
various shots of the shadowy bedroom showed that a flashover did not occur. A 'V'
shaped pattern against a wall and a breach through the ceiling is the only burn damage
shown other than the heater and the mysteriously charred upper doorframe. No other walls
are scorched, and the bed mattress has a few burn marks which show up in one scene but not
in another.
As mentioned previously, every exposed combustible item in a room is burning
during a flashover. How difficult could it have been to actually burn a mattress and a few
other props before placing them on the set?
And why did this couple have such a large space heater running in the bedroom when the
upscale suburban house they lived in undoubtedly had a heating unit built in? And
not to be nitpicking (too late!), but closets don't come equipped with wall
outlets. Not only that - if the heater really was "high-voltage" it
would have had a differently-shaped cord plug (like what you'd find on a clothes dryer
cord) which wouldn't have even fit into the bogus closet outlet that shouldn't
have been there.
The insulation on the wires Grissom was so carefully examining in an on-camera close-up
was burned away only in one small localized area, which is not unusual, and was pretty
conclusive evidence that the wires hadn't been "overloaded" with excessive
current. At least one of the wires should have been bared of insulation its entire length,
since the insulation would have melted off of any conductors overheated by a fire-causing
"overload".
What happened, electrically, appeared to be a fault (with electrical arcing - not an 'overload') in the duplex wall outlet (which, by
the way, occurred in the lower socket, and NOT the upper one where the heater was shown to
be plugged in during a flashback!). That electrical fault could have been caused by
the kerosene-fueled fire, another crucial point overlooked by Grissom.
But at the end, the man goes free (his girlfriend and Grissom are there when he's
released), and the episode ends with these lines:
suspect: It's funny. When I got out, I thought I'd feel ... (sighs) ...free.
GRISSOM: And ... ?
suspect: I feel ...
GRISSOM: ... responsible?
Ironically, Grissom helped free a man who very well may have committed the murders of his
wife and son. But he looked so cool doing it.
Scuba Dooba Doo
In another incredible plot, a scuba diver is found quite dead, suspended up in a
tree in a burned-out area of forest. The scriptwriters were obviously inspired by this urban myth,
but developed a nonsensical murder story around it full of inaccuracies about both scuba
diving AND fires.
In the story, two land developers get in a fight, with one killing the other. The killer
inexplicably decides to "disguise" the murder to resemble the urban myth, since
wildfires were apparently a problem around Las Vegas and Lake Mead at that time. So he
lathers his dead partner up with soap and somehow gets a wetsuit on him (anyone who's ever
donned a wetsuit while alive would know how impossible it'd be to get that thing on if
you're dead).
The killer gears up his
victim, complete with scuba tank, then props him up in the woods and lights a match,
creating a forest fire which ultimately blows up the scuba tank and sends the dead diver
high into a tree. Later we find that the diver, a developer, was also an environmentalist,
which was likely only a vehicle to introduce a bit of humor into the plot (in this case,
the scriptwriters had some fun with the term "tree-hugger").
Enter the amazingly adroit CSI team. The character "Catherine" performs her
investigation in the charred forest in a knockout tight and brilliantly white blouse -
hardly appropriate 'gear' for examining a fire scene. But she looked great!
Her partner discovers the remains of a cigarette butt embedded in a charred pack of
matches, and determines that this was a time-delay device which allowed the arsonist an
extra 5 minutes to escape undetected. If the scriptwriters had done their research, they'd
have discovered that, while smoldering rates vary, the burning time of an unpuffed
cigarette is actually 10 to 30 minutes.
The team observes that the diver's scuba tank had "fissured" at its base, which
is how the pressurized cylinder exploded and propelled the body upward into the tree. One
problem with this plot contrivance was that the exploding tank did not have the energy to
take a large human male body any significant distance. The second problem was that the
tank would more likely have ruptured at its valve or along its side - where it's weakest,
but certainly not at its base - which happens to be the strongest area
of the aluminum tank. A side rupture or valve failure, though, would have propelled the
body sideways or down and so were not plot-worthy.
The team also observed that
the diver's still-intact, plastic air pressure gauge showed a reading of about
3000psi. It's not clear what this had to do with the plot, but it looked cool - so
into the script it went. The problems here were that, even though the tank which
was supposedly supplying that pressure had blown up, and even though the hose from the
tank to the gauge had been burned in two - the gauge was still reading 3000
pounds per inch of pressure.
Bad Words
Of the three CSI plots critiqued here,
Bad Words was both the worst, and the most recent. Frankly, after these three programs
aired we stopped watching CSI altogether, even if the subject matter involved crashes or
fires. It got that frustrating.
In Bad Words, a night time fire occurs at a home, killing a teenaged girl in a
dysfunctional family of three generations of women and one young boy.
Three of the CSI investigators, Catherine, Warrick, and Nick, are immediately at the
scene, while the fire is still in progress. Jack, an arson investigator for the city, is
also present, and because he says that a garage fire occurred on the same street 10 days
prior, Catherine immediately jumps to the conclusion that the cause of this fire is
arson. No one has yet to even step into the yard of the house.
For most of the story, the crack team of investigators could not even determine which room
the fire started in. In real life, determining the room of fire origin is - by far - the
easiest part unless the entire house has burned down to the ground. In this story, where
only home furnishings have burned (and not the house itself), the room of origin should
have been easily determined within minutes.
While in the kitchen, Jack comments that the adhesive used in attaching flooring is
"highly flammable. Crack in the linoleum, the fire will just seek it out and go for
it." While this may be true when it's first installed, adhesive in flooring
does not normally contribute any significant fuel in a house fire. Jack's comment,
interpreted charitably, was apparently meant to be a 'red herring'
to throw us off the scent.
In the living room they focus on a heavily-burned couch. Catherine says, expertly,
"This looks like a liquid pour pattern. High-intensity burn." Couches
typically are constructed of wood, fabric, and polyurethane foam, and typically provide
one of the best fuels for a fire in the home.
When burning, furniture containing polyurethane foam creates a tremendous fire,
often producing the intense fire damages Catherine observed. The burn patterns created by
a burning couch also often mislead inexperienced fire investigators, as happened here.
Even Jack, the supposedly experienced arson investigator, is fooled. He thinks that the
fire spread from the couch toward the kitchen.
Later in the show, it's
explained that the polyurethane foam used in the couch was "outlawed in 1988 due to
its highly incendiary nature". Not true. In Great Britain, special regulations did go
into effect in 1988 regarding making the material fire retardant, but polyurethane foam is
still in wide use in furniture and other products today. You'll even find it in padded
bras.
Nick notes that the refrigerator magnets in the kitchen have demagnetized due to high
heat. He concludes that the fire had to exceed 932 degrees (the real temperature is
actually a hundred degrees or so higher) for that process to occur, and that the burning
sofa would not have reached such a "high" temperature. The reality is that flame
temperatures above a burning polyurethane-cushioned sofa can be double that
temperature.
In fact, in a typical house fire, the highest temperatures will often occur - surprise! - above
a burning sofa.
It's also doubtful that Nick would have found any refrigerator magnets. These flexible
magnets will burn in a fire (they're made of resins as well as ferrite powder).
Things really get interesting when Nick's videotapes taken of the crowd at both of the
fires show the same woman at each one. This excites him, especially since she's a good
looking woman. But since both fires were in the same neighborhood, shouldn't he have
expected to see some of the same people gawking at both?
Nick thought that this woman was "hot" - for a couple of reasons. In addition to
having been arrested in the past for arson, she arrives for his interview dressed in a
maximum cleavage red blouse, and explains - while licking her lips at
Nick - that she's not really an arsonist, but a pyromaniac who gets aroused when
she sets a fire. Pyromania is a very rare impulse control disorder which nearly
exclusively involves males, so this hottie was definitely an unusual creature,
indeed.
And, as for the "bad word" the young arsonist wrote on the floor? The
scriptwriters did manage to get that one right. This photo was taken of the school
notebook artwork of a troubled boy who, in real life, torched his own home.
Another memorable example
of inept TV scriptwriting involved a old 'Quincy' episode, titled Guilty Till Proven
Innocent, which dealt with a friend of county coroner Quincy. The man was accused of
setting his furniture warehouse on fire with gasoline, killing an employee in the process.
The Los Angeles arson investigator was depicted as the mean fire guy out to 'get' the poor
business owner.
As usual, Quincy solved the case and, of course, in favor of his friend - all questions of
conflict of interest aside.
How did the fire happen, according to Quincy? Well, the employee was walking along
carrying a can of gasoline which, unbeknownst to him, was badly rusted and leaking. When
he walked by a pilot light for a gas-fired appliance, the flame ignited the leaking
gasoline vapors as he passed. But the gas can itself was found far away from the body - so
how'd THAT happen, Quincy?
Quincy mused that the employee, engulfed in flames and holding a burning gas can, took the
additional time to fling the can far, far away. Then the poor chap turned around to run -
and ran right into a big wood beam that somehow was at forehead level, knocking himself
out. Unlike the CSI plot, at least here we have a reason (stretched thin as it is) for why
the victim didn't escape the flames.
From real life experience we can assure you that someone holding a gasoline can when it
suddenly ignites will drop that can right there, instinctively, like the
proverbial hot potato.
And two final thoughts: If that gasoline can had been leaking so badly, why did it still
have fuel in it and why didn't the poor employee notice the leaked gasoline before he even
picked it up?
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