An Interview with FFA’s Stuart Morrison
“Q’s for Stu”
Mr. Stuart Morrison, PE, DFE, IAAI-CFI brings an extremely valuable skill set to FFA’s investigation and consulting services.
A licensed private investigator, professional engineer and mechanical engineer, Mr. Morrison has fire causation determination experience from previous roles at National Academy of Forensic Engineers (NAFE), J.S. Held LLC, and service as a volunteer firefighter.
He holds a 2000 – 2012 Graduate Certificate in Fire Protection Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
He was gracious enough to participate in a Q&A to discuss his interest, methodology and procedures in fire damage scene survey and analysis. Our “Q’s to Stu” are below:
Q: What ‘sparked’ your interest in fire?
A: Originally, it wasn’t something that I had sought out. I was actually working for an engineering company doing failure analysis on turbines and generators. Power generation equipment. I just happened to also be a volunteer fire fighter on the side.
My company was working with another engineering company on a government research project. That company had been doing fire investigations and their engineer got transferred to South Carolina. So, my name was brought up as a referral, because I had been a volunteer firefighter. That was in 1993, so I started down that road and fell in love with it. Here I am, thirty-three years later.
Also, when I was young… like any little boy, I did enjoy playing with fire!
Q: In those thirty-three years, how have you seen the technology of assessing fire damage evolve? Has the new technology been a boon to fire investigation? Is human empiricism and experience the best quality to excel at fire investigation and analysis?
A: It is “some of both.” There is no substitute for the experience of ‘knowing what you look at.’ Fire is a science; it has variables but it generally tries to do the same thing every single time.
That being said, the technological advances have been incredible. I started, as I said, in 1993. In 1992 – The NFPA (National Fire Protection Organization) put out the first version of NFPA 921, which is their guide to fire and explosion investigation.
Prior to that, there were a couple of text books that people had written, but there wasn’t a lot of science behind it. These books basically details a series of tests that these engineers had run in their own houses and garages to try to put some science to fire investigation. “I lit something on fire, threw it in the fireplace and watched it burn, and took some notes on what it did.” But, that’s not the real world. That doesn’t take into account all the different variables of something catching on fire or exploding.
So, the NFPA 921 was the first guide to be backed by a significant amount of research. The National Fire Lab in Maryland (ran by the ATF) contributed, some gentlemen involved in the Fire Protection Program at Worcester Poly Tech contributed, and so on. That original NFPA guide as a printed book was about half an inch thick. The 2024 edition is huge – four times as thick, if not more.
So, as time passes, more research is conducted, more research is presented to fire investigators. What difference does ventilation have? What difference does the fuel have, and the location of the fuel? What happens to a fire’s growth when you move it from the center of a room to the corner of the room? And these are all factors that people have conducted experiment after experiment on to verify the science behind these things. There’s no substitute for that.
The amount of knowledge available to fire investigators NOW versus when I started… It’s night and day. And it’s all for the better.
Q: You mentioned you were in Failure Analysis before you entered the realm of fire investigations. Beyond real world site experience – including your time as a volunteer firefighter, were there any programs, institutions or courses that proved beneficial to your study in fire investigation?
A: When I started in failure analysis on generator equipment, it was a lot of working with older mentors. The company I started with was a spin-off of General Electric, the founder of the company was a General Electric retiree. G.E. was, at that time, the largest manufacturer of turbines and generators in the United States, if not the world. The gentleman I worked under – twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years of experience in all aspects of turbines and generators: what makes them work, what makes them fail.
So, just working with those people and understanding failure analysis concepts was crucial for me. Looking for what goes wrong, or what can go wrong.
Oftentimes, when engineers design products, they think “this is the thing that will most likely go wrong, so I’ll design to abate that.” But these gentlemen I worked with were on the flipside, the failure analysis side. They had to think of things you wouldn’t normally think would go wrong, and what would happen in that ‘cascade’ – that chain of events – that would take us from “something is working” to “something was working but then caught fire or exploded.”
With that being said, I’ve taken numerous classes along the way, I’ve taken several college classes on failure analysis and other aspects of what I do. And they all mesh together. So, I wouldn’t say there is one particular class or course or ‘thing.’ It is more ‘putting together the breadth of knowledge, it’s learning from people who have done this work for a while, and it’s really the ability to think outside the box and say “this is what I am seeing, but what does it mean? How do I put all these puzzle pieces to get to the answer?”
Q: When you report to a site, do you have a set procedure and protocol in your investigation and analysis that you implement?
A: Yes. According to NFP 921, we have a set procedure that we’re to do every single time. With that being said, every scene is different. But the systematic approach is the same – you’ll gather all the available data, however you can. That data is what you see, it’s witness statements, anything the fire department may have seen at the time, and so forth.
You really need to be careful not to dismiss anything. When a home owner says “I saw a mouse running across the floor two days before the day of the fire,” or “I smelled something but I didn’t know what it was.” You don’t want to latch on to that – “Oh, he saw a mouse. Obviously, the mouse chewed through a wire and that’s what caused the fire! Cased closed!” – but you don’t want to dismiss it, either. Like I said earlier, it’s a puzzle. It’s a one thousand piece puzzle and even if you leave five pieces out… you’ll never solve it.
Q: As an investigator, how do you ensure the integrity and accuracy of collecting evidence and causation determination in your onsite work?
A: I think the big thing is remaining impartial. Trying not to fixate on what you think the cause is. Always question yourself, think critically about how another expert or an attorney may question you if things proceed to trial.
So, the more you 1) Stop, 2) Think and 3) Contemplate everything, the more impartial you’re going to be and the more likely you’ll perform that scene inspection the proper way.
Conduct your exam slowly. Take the time to take your pictures, put the placards out to show what you’re looking at before you touch anything. If you’re doing a joint exam, bring everyone together to review your findings. If you’re on your own, leave evidence there in its place so that others can see it ‘as is.’
If the evidence has to go, make sure you document everything thoroughly so that others can come to the same conclusion you did of how it fits into the picture of the investigation.
These practices help the investigator ensure their own impartiality. You approach these scene exams impartially, the greater chance for a positive outcome. AND – a positive outcome does not necessarily mean everyone agrees on the cause of the fire or the explosion, but it does mean everyone has the opportunity to deal with the same set of facts.
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