Welcome to this edition of the IAAI’s CFITrainer.Net podcast.

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Following up on our last two podcasts about wildland investigation, we have two interesting new technology developments in wildland fires to share with you, and then we’ll talk to Lester Rich from the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, MD. First, the technology developments related to wildland fires.

During the recent spate of wildfires in California, scientists from San Jose State University’s Fire Weather Research Laboratory have been testing an experimental Doppler radar to see inside wildfire smoke plumes with groundbreaking clarity. It’s enabling a new understanding of turbulence, particle movement, and wind inside wildfire plumes. This new technology allows researchers to better understand the structure of wildfires and how they evolve, particularly wind generated by the fire and the spin-out of embers that spark new fires, two things that current models cannot predict.

A better understanding of the mechanics of wildfires might lead to more accurate forecasts and thus earlier and better warning systems as well as more efficient and accurate deployment of firefighting resources. Doppler radar uses the reflection of microwaves off solid objects to derive data on their size and motion. This new system specifically for wildfires uses the Ka band, which is better suited to detecting very small particles like ash. It also scans faster and at a higher resolution than traditional Doppler and LiDAR. This experimental wildfire Doppler is small enough to be mounted on a vehicle and thus can be driven directly to where the fire is.

In other technology news, a team of researchers at Stanford University has developed a non-toxic, biodegradable, cellulose-based, gel-like fluid that helps common wildland fire retardants last much longer. When fire retardant and the booster gel are sprayed together on vegetation, the gel helps the retardant last the entire fire season because it is resistant to the effects of weather and stops the evaporation of moisture in the retardant that renders it ineffective, which can happen in a short period of time if it’s deployed near the heat of an active wildfire. Although the gel will eventually degrade, that process takes months, and therefore reapplication will be needed much less often, saving time and resources and significantly reducing the amount of retardant needed to provide long-lasting protection.

The gel-retardant combination could be particularly effective in preventative treatment of fire-prone areas, including those frequented by humans (who cause a high percentage of wildfires) and areas under power lines. The gel-retardant combination could also be used to slow or stop the spread of an existing fire by keeping flying embers from sparking new spot fires. The gel can be applied using existing agricultural and aircraft-based spraying equipment. In tests conducted with CalFire, the treatment including the new gel provided complete fire protection even after an inch of rain; without the gel, the same fire retardant provides little to no protection under the same conditions. Further tests on high fire-risk roadside areas are currently underway. The gel has been recently branded as a product called Fortify and is now commercially available. Be sure to check out the links on this podcast’s page to source articles so you can read more of the technical details and the story about how the idea for the gel came to the lead researcher and how his team made it real.

Now let’s take a few minutes to learn about what is going on at the NFA!

With us today is Lester Rich, an IAAI-CFI who is a Training Specialist and Curriculum Manager for the National Fire Academy at the U.S. Fire Administration. Lester is also a retired ATF Special Agent/Certified Fire Investigator and was a member of the National Response Team for ten years. Let’s head over now to The National Emergency Training Center, or NETC, in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

ROD AMMON: So, we’re here in Emmitsburg at the National Fire Academy with Lester Rich. I just wanted to say thank you very much, Lester, for being with us.

LESTER RICH: Excellent. Thank you for coming out.

ROD AMMON: We’ll jump right into it and talk a little bit about your background.

LESTER RICH: Okay. So, I am the training specialist for the Fire and Investigative Sciences Program here at the NFA. That encompasses all the fire investigation and forensic science, courtroom testimony courses, pretty much all aspects of the curriculum that relate fire investigation.

ROD AMMON: So, tell me how you got started here at the NFA. What brought you in?

LESTER RICH: I was – I’ve always been interested in the training environment. So, I started out as the fire marshal in Watauga County up in North Carolina and then went to work for Charlotte Fire Department as an investigator. That’s where I got involved with ATF, found out a little bit about their fire investigation responsibilities. So, I applied, was selected there by ATF. They sent me to Charleston, so I was there for a while, and then I took a deferred retirement from them, started my own fire investigation company with a couple other people. So, we ran that for 10 years, and then this position opened up, and I was kind of interested to get back in training. And so that’s how I ended up back up here and – or not back up here. That’s how I ended up here in Maryland.

ROD AMMON: That’s a pretty interesting path. It’s – I’m not used to hearing people take the break, go private, and come back.

LESTER RICH: Right, and it was good for me at the time, and actually for this particular position, I think it was a fortuitous that I did that because it kind of gives me a perspective of both sides of the coin.

ROD AMMON: So, tell me about how you create curriculum.

LESTER RICH: Sure. So about – specifically here at the academy, about two years ago, we had a curriculum review. So, we brought in people from all across the country review the existing curriculum. They were in here for about a week. I had academics, practitioners, instructors just to – as many people as I could get to come look at the curriculum. So out of that came this, and so what we’re doing is we just created a overall broad curriculum. We sort of created two bookends in the curriculum, so I have the Fire Investigation Essentials course, which is 772. All the numbers changed. Some of the names changed. All the content changed.

ROD AMMON: Why did you change the numbers?

LESTER RICH: So, the number change is how the – it’s basically administratively so that the academy designates that as a new course, a completely different course from what it was. So, the old 200 numbers were archived and – but that number can’t go away. You can’t recycle it, so we ended up with new numbers moving to the 700s.

ROD AMMON: I think you guys are just doing it to make yourselves look smarter.

LESTER RICH: It is – 700 is a lot smarter than 200, sure. So, we moved to the 700s, and we’ve got the Essentials course, which is – well, there’s a First Responder course, which is very similar to the video like IAAI made. It basically deals with issues that affect the first responder as related to fire investigation or responding to fires, protecting the scene, preserving evidence, identifying evidence, some things like that. So in between those two bookends, we’ve got an electrical course. We have a Technical Aspects course, and we have a Expert Witness Courtroom Testimony course. And then also we are working on a online instructor led or a mediated report writing course, so in that particular course, the student will take it wherever they are, anticipate that course will run about six weeks, and it will really delve into a writing an expert report, writing a more complex report.

ROD AMMON: I know there’s a lot of people who are going to appreciate that.

LESTER RICH: I think it will be very popular once we get it up and running.

ROD AMMON: I think there’s a lot of people who read reports who are going to really appreciate that, too. I know that when I talk to people, there’s – it’s like in so many industries writing, writing well is so important.

LESTER RICH: Right, and it’s sort of a unique situation in that we introduce that subject in Essentials, but there’s just not time in that two weeks to really delve into the writing. And then it pops up again in the technical and obviously – or not obviously, but one of the changes for the new Courtroom Testimony course, we developed all new cold-case fire scenes. And so those fire scenes will now get presented to the student on their arrival here, and during the first week of the class they will actually craft or create their own expert report. And that’s the report they’ll use to testify from the second week of the class. And the other thing we’re kind of excited about is we expanded that to include three testimony opportunities now. So, a student will have a CV, sort of like a Daubert Challenge the first part of the week. They then will have a deposition about that same case file, and then towards the end of the week, there will be a mock trial where each student will also testify in court about that same case file that they’ve been working with all week.

ROD AMMON: It’s pretty in depth. You’ve done a lot of work.

LESTER RICH: It’s a lot of stuff. It’s a lot of material. That’s for sure.

ROD AMMON: It’s interesting to me and I’ve been around a little bit with you guys for quite some time now, and when I think about fire investigation and the USFA or NFA for the academy here, I am thinking, wow, you’ve really expanded. I think of usually the NFA as being more about other aspects of firefighting. Has it expanded more in fire investigation?

LESTER RICH: It has in – well, I – yes. So, one of the kind of interesting parts of that, and this is a little urban history or oral history that I’ve been told, so that the NFA was actually offering fire investigation courses very early on. Like some of the very first courses that the Fire Academy offered were in fire investigation and arson. So that program has been entrenched in the NFA since its inception. This is a – I think this is a reboot of that in that it’s more cohesive now, and this new curriculum is more in line with 921, 1033, with Kirk’s and the other books and publications that are out there. And it also seems like it’s in line with things that other training organizations are doing.

So, like with IAAI, they’re partners with us in this adventure up here that we have. These courses count towards IAAI like the FIT certification for essentials or for – to meet the requirement for the courtroom testimony. That course will. Obviously, ATF has been here for probably 10 or 12 years since – ago that they got really heavily invested in participating with the NFA and really dumping a lot of resources into this program. So, when ATF got involved, that was kind of the turning point where the program really started to swing towards science and education and research and testing and with the fire research lab. And then as this curriculum development starts to unfold, we picked up some other partners. We picked up Underwriters Laboratory with contributing content, contributing expertise, writing some of the stuff for us, same thing with ATF’s fire research lab. We can get engineers up here to instruct. They’ll assist with that content development as well.

The other partnership we’ve got is with Homeland Security’s Science and Technology directorate. So, I don’t know a lot of – some firefighters might be familiar with them. They have focus groups. They look at designing additional equipment or things that would assist the first responder. And it’s sort of a – it’s a DHS program that sort of fast tracks that development and then tries to get it to the streets. So I think that’s probably one of the big things that’s changed in the last two or three years is – and especially with the rewrite is the inclusion of some more experts, some more subject matter experts, some additional partners to help really elevate the level of what we're doing here.

ROD AMMON: And you’re doing blended learning as well. I mean with this online stuff that you’re doing yourself and with the partnership with CFITrainer, which obviously we all appreciate very much.

LESTER RICH: Yes, yes. We appreciate that, too.

ROD AMMON: Without saying thank you from the IAAI would be remiss. You’re also doing some things outside. Want to talk a little bit about that? That’s expanded as well.

LESTER RICH: It’s a lot of concrete. Yes, we have expanded again. As best I could tell, the original burn cells were dropped in there sometime in ‘86, ‘87 maybe. So, we now have the flashover ventilation demo burn building. We have a complex burn building, which is a 15 by 40. Right now, it’s set up like a townhouse. It’s configurable. The walls are movable inside so we can do multi-room burns in that structure. And then this summer we just completed construction of eight. They’re attached, but they’re individual burn cells.

One thing we were able to do is create some different layouts. So, they’re all 10 by 14, but we were able to move the doors in different places. Some of the cells has multiple windows. We have – one of the cells, the windows are different heights so we can get an inflow and outflow, kind of simulate flow path there. Some of the windows are really close together. Some of them are farther apart. We tried to really, as much as we could, create variations for ventilation. It’s a great learning opportunity for students because even if they came back, if they were here one month and came back the next month, they’ll get completely different fires essentially with – depending on the layout, the furniture, where it was set, that kind of stuff.

ROD AMMON: That’s awesome. I – it’s so funny. When we started out, you made it sound like, oh yeah, we’ve been doing this for a long time, and then you start talking, and quite frankly, it seems to me you’re picking up a lot of momentum. You’ve got a lot of fresh information and content being put out there and structure. So now I’ve always got to push a little bit more. What’s the future like? What are you seeing?

LESTER RICH: It’s – I see this as really the demand increasing as far as wanting this course offered more often or the ability to put that together. That’s one of the things we’re talking about with Chief Hoover and the administration here is like, how do we really meet that need? Because it’s – I mean, if I – if we have the best-case scenario, I can put about 800 or so students a year through each of those courses.

The other part of that is the instructor cadre that we have here. So, we have a combination, like I said, of ATF. So, they’re here on campus all the time. We usually get a visiting a CFI, so ATF will bring one of their CFIs from the field in to contribute to the course, which is really good for the students. One, it lets them see an ATF agent, and then they develop that relationship as well. We also have expanded that now to include like the Maryland Fire Marshal’s Office. So, they’re bringing a canine in for the practical exercise.

So now our students have access to a dog. Some of them use the dog all the time. Some of them maybe never had a dog at their department. So that expands. So, really, it’s – I see the future as just an increase in the level of the instructor and that group or that partnership that we’re leveraging with UL and ATF and the fire research lab and even our contract instructors. I’ve got engineers on the contract instructor staff now, and we’re really trying to bolster that.

ROD AMMON: I remember talking to Superintendent Hoover, and she said, you’ve got to get out of here and talk to Lester, and I’m glad we did.

LESTER RICH: I’m sure glad you guys came out. I do. I think it’s the – really that’s probably the biggest takeaway is the partnerships that are nurtured here. They’re started elsewhere, but then when they come here, we have instructors from IAAI, ATF. Like I said, we named them all, but just the fact that it’s a sort of incubator for ideas, and we get people from different – law enforcement, private sector, private research, government research, science and technology.

It’s just a really unique sort of academic environment where you can kind of leverage that, and people have good ideas, and they’ll be like, hey, what if we try this in the burn cell? We’ll be like, let’s try that. That’s really probably one of the most interesting aspects of it is just getting all that group of people together, and we often – we don’t always agree on everything, but at the end of the day, it’s a great – it produces a great product for the student.

ROD AMMON: Well, I didn’t finish the sentence before, but thank you.

LESTER RICH: You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

ROD AMMON: That was what I had started to say on behalf IAAI and CFITrainer and everybody else. We really appreciate it.

LESTER RICH: You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Thank you, guys, for coming out.

ROD AMMON: Once again, Lester, thanks for joining us today, and we hope everyone listening will take a few minutes to use the link on this podcast page to check out NFA’s current courses for fire investigators.

Before we wrap up today, I want to give a special shout out to Cathy Dipierro who researches and writes a ton of content for our podcasts and for CFITrainer.Net modules. Thanks for what you do, Kathy.

Thanks for joining us today on the podcast. We wish you all a safe holiday season. We’ll see you next time on CFITrainer.Net. For the IAAI and CFITrainer.Net. I’m Rod Ammon.