Fire
can either be a cause of an aircraft accident or incident or result from it. Fires occur in engines, engine bays, cabins, cargo holds,
wheel wells and fuel tanks. Despite
the fact that in-flight fire events are relatively rare, post-impact fires
are not. Even when there is no evidence of an in-flight fire or reason to
suspect one, the post impact fire can destroy a lot of evidence related to
aircraft systems and structure. For
this reason, some knowledge of how materials behave in the presence of fire
is useful to the aircraft accident investigator.
In addition, one of the areas an investigator must evaluate is the
Fire Response and Survivability aspects of the accident.
This requires familiarity with aircraft fire response procedures and
capability. This course will
provide this knowledge.
This
course is designed to introduce the aircraft accident investigator to the
fundamentals of fire investigation. Based
on the NFPA 921, Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, the
course will begin with some basic fire science concepts and how fires begin
and propagate. There will be a discussion of the behavior of aircraft fluids
and materials in the presence of fire to include recognition of the
differences between inflight and post-impact fire evidence.
There will also be a discussion of basic fire investigation
techniques. The fire investigation will be followed by an introduction to
identifying and investigating explosions.
This portion of the course will include discussion on explosion
evidence, typical causes and investigation procedures.
The course will conclude with a brief review of fire response
capability levels and how to evaluate such response.
