VIDEO: Just like anyone else, fire investigators need to go to school. On Thursday, the classroom is a vacant house in rural Anoka County where, a couple of weeks ago, the Minnesota State Fire Marshalโs Office set six different fires, then put them out, now returning for their students to try to figure out what happened.
Their teacher is Levi Roline, the Deputy State Fire Marshal for Minnesota. And this time, heโs got a brand-new piece of tech to add to the ever-evolving world of fire detective work.
“As far as fire investigation as a science, weโre one of the youngest forensic sciences thatโs out there,” Roline said.
A couple of times a year, the State Fire Marshalโs Office holds these training sessions in various parts of Minnesota.
Itโs a two-week class attended by members of local fire departments and investigators from other agencies, “where theyโve learned how to process a fire scene,” said Roline, “and determine the origin and the cause of a fire.”
This group included a forensic scientist with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) whose day job is fire debris analysis in the state crime lab.
