CSI: Jasper Williamson builds cases by following fiery evidence
By SHARON KERR

JASPER CITY FIRE MARSHAL Stephen Williamson goes through the rubble of a recent fire scene searching for the cause of the blaze.

Every fire is CSI Jasper (crime scene investigation) for Jasper Fire Marshal Stephen Williamson.

A career firefighter, he is a trained and licensed fire and arson investigator with 17 years of experience reading the clues left by fires. Heat and smoke are the fingerprints, and the blackened structure is the body he will dissect.

"The story the evidence tells is irrefutable," Williamson says.

He starts all investigations by going clockwise around the outside of the building, taking photos and notes.

Inside, he says, all firemen learn to "take the left wall" when entering a smoky structure. "You orient yourself by touch when you can't see," he explained.

"In case I ever have to go to court, I always know the order the evidence was photographed in. If they ask how you know that, I can say you always do it the same way, so you always know."

The fire marshal demonstrated other techniques he uses in fire sleuthing at tour of four Jasper fires-a storage building on Visadore Road and house fires on North Wheeler, Lela and Ogden Streets.

FIRE MARSHAL Stephen Williamson inspects a fire extinguisher at his office at city hall.

Visadore Road

The fire on Visadore Road is currently being investigated as suspected arson. Fire broke out in a small storage building about 4 p.m. Nov. 25.

The building, owned by JEDCO and leased by Jasper Independent School District, was a total loss, but the cause is undetermined at this time.

Williamson said he has some leads and is asking anyone who may have seen people in that area Saturday afternoon after Thanksgiving to call him at 384-3651.

The clues he gathered on the scene allowed him to rule out some possible causes.

The building was known to have electrical problems, so Williamson examined a light fixture that fell to the floor when the roof burned away.

"Fluorescent lights are wonderful for clues," Williamson said. "The ballast can cause internal heating and the wires to burn out. You can tell this light was a problem at one time, and I was working on it as a potential emission source until I determined that there was no electricity to the building at the time of the fire."

Williamson said when putting the puzzle pieces together, always look for the lowest burn point. Fire invariably goes up, and when it does, it leaves a signature "V" pattern blackened on the wall.

The lowest burn in the Visadore structure is at the northeast corner. Charring patterns on wall studs confirm that is also the direction of greatest heat.

Williamson examined a stack of blackened shelves leaning against a wall. Only the first few were burned through. Inside the stack, shelves were blackened most on the edges but the center still showed brown wood.

"The shelves tell me the fire was hottest on this side," Williamson said.

At the doorway is a pile of rubble, possibly there before the fire, or possibly debris that fell in from the gravel-tar roof that burned away.

"To find out, we get a shovel."

Williamson said he sometimes sifts the rubble looking for clues. Fire supply companies sell a professional-grade ash sifter for $180, but mindful of the city's limited budget, Williamson uses a plastic kitty litter tray with grate.

"Adapt and overcome," Williamson says. "It works just fine."

Digging down to the concrete slab, Williamson looks for signs of accelerants. "Gasoline will pit concrete because liquid chemicals burn hotter than vapor. There will always be a chemical mark, no way around it."

Finding no chemical signatures, Williamson is left speculating that something, maybe a burning piece of paper, ignited a fire in the corner which spread to the rest of the structure. The building had no alarm or sprinkler system.

Lela Street

The skeleton of the white frame house on Lela Street is still standing after a fire in June because the insurance company has been slow to act, according to Williamson.

"I am a public servant and my job is to help you," Williamson said. "If I work with the insurance company, sometimes you may get a settlement faster. I frequently walk insurance agents through a fire, and that sometimes means papers are started in days instead of waiting weeks for their investigators."

Looking at the house on Lela, Williamson noted that the front is heat damage. "It's called ballooning, where hot air comes rolling through the door frame at ceiling level."

The wall is untouched at floor level with a relatively clean border two feet tall all around the room.

"This is why you crawl out of a fire," Williamson explained. The room was hot enough that the furniture ignited, and yet the baseboards are intact.

Walking into the kitchen, it's obvious to Williamson that the heat damage is still worst at the ceiling, least at the bottom.

In the next room, a bedroom, the mattresses caught fire but the walls beside them are not burned. That tells him the hot air at the ceiling caused the beds to ignite, but the mattresses weren't the source of the fire, as some people thought.

Williamson always interviews everyone he can-witnesses, the homeowner and firefighters from the scene. But then he sets all that aside and asks, "What does the fire pattern tell me?"

Checking the weather for that day yields a clue. The wind was blowing from the south, the front of the house, so fire would have moved from the source to the north. That's a clue that the Lela fire didn't start in the back bedroom, as reported.

Neither was it caused by the gas heater, another likely guess, because the heater was not connected in June.

In the middle of the house, there's a bathroom but no sign of a bathroom door. "When you can't find the door, that's a pretty good indicator of extreme heat," Williamson said. "The vanity is also completely gone, and if you look outside, you see the 'V' pattern."

Once he knows where the fire started, he goes back for more questions. "I try not to be an interrogator when I don't suspect any crime. "

In the Lela case, the homeowner was away and says she did not burn candles in the bathroom and doesn't think she left the curling iron on.

Williamson found what was left of the iron and confirmed that it was not plugged in. He concluded that it could be something as simple as a plug-in air freshener or sometimes static electricity can start a fire.

Once the blaze got going, it probably breached the bathroom within three to five minutes, burned through ceiling, and once it was traveling through the attic, the wind carried it to the back of the house.

Meanwhile everything inside the home superheated, causing and mattresses and upholstery to ignite.

"The important thing is that there is nothing that indicates criminal intent. It was lucky the owner wasn't home."

North Wheeler

A working smoke detector gave Diedra Lawson the minutes needed to save her threeyear old son Jalon and a puppy from the burning house on North Wheeler.

She heard the detector, looked in the living room and saw the couch engulfed in flame, grabbed her son and fled.

Williamson determined that the sofa was not the source. The wall behind it did not have the right burn fingerprints, but the far corner had the "V" pattern right down to the floor.

"The mom looked in the room and saw the sofa, and didn't notice that the rest of the room was already burning," Williamson said.

In a fire like this, the residents have only three to five minutes before the heat and smoke boils through the whole house.

The remains of a halogen lamp were found plugged into an extension cord, which leads to a wall plug completely melted and fused. (Lawson said the lamp was usually left on). Halogen lamps draw a lot of power, and this one was plugged into the same outlet as a television and a video game.

Williamson says that extension cords are only intended for temporary use. "If you need more outlets, have more plugs properly installed," he recommends.

If a cord feels hot, it has too much load. Another error that causes many fires is coiling up multiple cords, either tying them or wrapping them around a metal desk leg to get them out of the way. It may look neat, but it can generate enough heat to start a fire.

Even when he has the "smoking gun," Williamson always steps back and asks, does this make sense?

To be sure, he checked other wiring in the house and found a 220 wire to a drier that was not installed according to code.

Williamson said you run your hands up and down the wires. If the coating is burned away but the wires are smooth, as these are, that indicates the heat was external. An electric wire that overheated internally is has drips and bumps and is rough to the touch.

Williamson pointed to a space over the front door where the original paint is undamaged. "This is why you don't put smoke detectors in corners," he said. They can harbor pockets of cold air and the detector may not go off."

To be effective, a detector must be at least two feet out or two feet down from the space where the ceiling meets the wall.

Ogden Street

The Ogden fire occurred last week. The occupant, Ricky Brooks, told arriving firemen that he thought the gas water heater blew up. An orange pole stuck in the yard showed where the gas company was probing to see if there were any leaks.

Whenever there is gas to a structure that has burned, the gas company tests lines for pressure, quality and volume.

In this case, the "gas" problem was gasoline, a leaky tank in the vehicle parked in the garage. Three "V" patterns were present on the walls, one on each side near the gas tank, and one on the back wall near the gas water heater. The smell of gasoline was still present the day after the fire.

Following his usual "take the left wall" approach, Williamson examined the house. The living room showed typical heat damage- charred ceiling but unburned wallpaper near the floor. The sofa cushions ignited and burned the covers off, but not the foam cores.

Dripping plastic icicles show that the components in the entertainment center were melted, not burned.

The kitchen next to the garage got super hot. There are professional gauges you can stick into a blackened stud; char depth gives you fire temperature. Williamson said a pocket knife and tape measure can do the same.

In the bedrooms, the smoke and heat banked over and came rolling through the attic. The house and belongings were a complete loss, except for a few clothes and shoes in the front bedroom farthest from the fire.

Williamson completed his investigation later that day (see Ogden fire story in this issue) and ruled that while it was not arson, the fire was preventable.

Williamson said if you've got a leaking gas tank, don't park your car in a garage with a gas water heater; ditto for equipment like weed eaters, lawn mowers and gas cans. Even a water heater that is

properly elevated and in a separate closet should not have anything combustible stored with it, including brooms, rags, paper or flammable liquids.

Back in the office

"Fires are incredibly dirty," Williamson said, yet his office is neat and clean.

The fire marshal described other clues he always looks for in every fire. "We check doors to see if there was forced entry. Even if the door is burned away, you can find the hardware and tell if the deadbolt was locked."

Williamson pulled a misshapen light bulb out of a drawer. "This came out of a vent hood over a stove. Lightbulbs are drawn to heat and will slump in the direction of the fire, better than a flashing arrow pointing at the source of the blaze."

Anything metal that got hot and got water on it, like a refrigerator, is going to rust in a pattern of directionality that tells you where the fire was hottest. Aheat signature is like fingerprints.

Photos and evidence from fires are kept on file for years. Williamson buys new paint cans to keep samples. "I can put a piece of carpet in one of these, put it on the shelf, and a fire lab could test for accelerants years from now if any questions came up."

Williamson said Jasper does not have lab facilities, but if he has any doubts, he can always call on the state for assistance. In some cases, an insurance company will send in a team to investigate, and he is happy to have their expertise on the scene.

Williamson has been career firefighter. He started as a paramedic, but was always intrigued by investigations. He went into law enforcement so he could learn to do CSI work, and wound up teaching the subject at Angelina College.

After a few years, he realized he was teaching students what he really wanted to be doing himself. That's when the opportunity came up in Jasper.

When not doing his CSI work, Williamson is working to bring structures in Jasper up to city codes on everything from hazardous structures to weed abatement.

"The good news is that 95 percent of the people have corrected violations without the need for enforcement action," Williamson said.

"I am from a small town and I appreciate the small town atmosphere. The good part is more people will stop and help you. The bad part is rubberneckers sometimes get in the way."