California Fire and Life

California Fire and Life by Don Winslow Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: California Fire and Life by Don Winslow Read Free Book Online
Authors: Don Winslow
here, the entire purpose for providing you with this multi-thousand-dollar education, is for you to be able to go to the scene of a fire and determine its cause and origin. If you should pass this class, that will become the sole purpose of your professional life.”
    Looks at the class like he’s Jesus Christ telling Peter he’s supposed to build the church. Looking at them like he’s thinking, Fat chance you dim bulbs could find your asses with both hands, let’s not talk about building no church.
    Anyway, hopeless as they are, they’re all he’s got, so he carries on with, “People’s lives, futures and financial well-being will depend on the accuracy of your determinations as to cause and origin. Your conclusions will be the basis for decisions to prosecute or not to prosecute, to convict or acquit, to hold individuals or corporations liable or not liable in civil suits. So your competence, or lack thereof, will be very critical to individuals and societies. I will do my level best to ensure that we unleash no incompetents upon the public. You will not get the benefit of the doubt. This is a pass/fail course—you pass with a grade of A. Anything below that, you fail.”
    Which intimidates Jack not at all because this is basically the way he was raised. You do the job right or you do it again
until
you do it right or you just get out.
    So Jack’s like,
Bring it on, Captain Sparky
.
    “The first rule of cause and origin,” the captain says, “and I quote—andyou will commit this to memory—is,
‘Unless all relevant accidental causes can be eliminated, the fire must be declared accidental, the presence of direct evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.’
    “That is to say, that unless you can rule out all possible accidental causes, you may not conclude that the fire was intentionally set. You must classify the cause of the fire as ‘Unknown.’
    “Now let’s look at the other classifications of accidental causes …”
    Natural, Electrical and Chemical.
    Natural—your basic Act of God. Lightning, wildfire, the apocalypse. A gimme putt, because when a house gets hit by lightning …
    Electrical—a major source of accidental fires, Jack learns. So major a source that for a few days Jack thinks he’s studying to be an electrician. They’re running electrical engineers and electrical contractors through the classroom and Jack’s up late at night studying standard electrical plans for your basic two-bedroom two-bath model home.
    They’ve got the class examining burned-out cords—“Was the cord burned
by
the fire or was it the
source
of the fire? You need to know”—and electrical outlets and electric blankets and fuse boxes. The class learns how to determine if someone tampered with a circuit breaker in order to give the appearance of an accidental electric fire. They learn how people can accidentally set fire to their houses by overloading extension cords, or leaving them where the dog can chew on them, or by splicing wires or by generally trying to get more electric power than their system was designed to handle.
    Electricity is heat, Jack learns, subject to all the physical laws and consequences thereof. It is, in effect, an incipient smoldering phase awaiting the kiss that will send it to ignition.
    Chemical—propane, natural gas, methane explosions. Then you’re looking for code violations, sloppy installation, mechanical breakdowns. Once again Jack feels as if he’s learning a new trade, because they’re bringing heating contractors in and they break down oil heaters and pumps, propane tanks and insertion systems, nozzles, ignition systems. They learn what they’re supposed to look like and what they look like when things go wrong.
    And another chemical cause—smoking in bed. One of the most common causes of household fires and a beaut. A king-size polyurethane mattress has an HRR of 2,630 (over three times that of a big dry Christmas tree), so if you light one of those up it’s

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