Rod Ammon: Welcome to the CFITrainer.Net podcast. Today we're talking with Fire Arson Investigator Nicole Brewer of Portland Fire and Rescue in Oregon. Investigator Brewer was named the IAAI Investigator of the Year in 2022 for her work to stop a serial arsonist who was setting fires almost daily and rapidly escalating their behavior. She's here to talk about the investigative work in that case and another, as well as how her Fire Investigation Unit is organized as a team effort across disciplines and the research work and cognitive bias she is doing for her Ph.D. We'll also have an update on what to look forward to at this year's IAAI ITC, which is rapidly approaching. Stay tuned for that preview and the registration information. Investigator Brewer is an IAAI CFI with a vehicle endorsement IAAI CI and an IAAI ECT. She's a 26-year veteran of the fire service with 15 years as a full-time police-certified fire and arson investigator with Portland Fire and Rescue. Currently, her duties include the investigation of residential, commercial, vehicle, and outdoor fires, including those complicated by explosions, injuries, arson, fatalities, or greater alarms, as well as fires related to criminal investigations. She has also conducted private fire investigations since 2014, Investigator Brewer has conducted over 2,500 fire and explosion investigations. She trains new fire investigators and has participated in validating IFSTA textbooks. She holds multiple degrees in fire-related disciplines and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in forensic sciences, arson, and explosives from Oklahoma State University. Among her awards are the Oregon EMS Medal of Valor and the Portland Fire and Rescue Ribbon of Merit. She began her career as a volunteer firefighter with the Canby Fire District Investigator Brewer, welcome to the podcast.

Nicole Brewer: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Rod Ammon: It's nice. Well, it's great to have you here. We appreciate your time. Before we talk about the case that won IAAI Investigator of the Year, tell us a little bit about how you got into fire investigation.

Nicole Brewer: Well, initially actually I started with an interest in law enforcement and one of the very first courses that I took was a course in fire investigation, oddly enough, and I had a great instructor at that time and he just spurred my interest in fire investigation and it kind of took off from there. It was back in the early 90s that I took that course and ever since then I've been on a path to become a fire investigator.

Rod Ammon: Can we give some props to that person who spurred your interest?

Nicole Brewer: Yeah, his name was Larry Lore. He used to be actually the mayor of Hubbard in Oregon years and years ago.

Rod Ammon: Wow, interesting. A mayor and a fire investigator. I've heard close, but I don't think I've heard a mayor and a fire investigator and a trainer. That's pretty cool.

Nicole Brewer: Yeah. Yeah, he was a man that could do it all.

Rod Ammon: All right, so you've been involved with the IAAI both on the international and the Oregon Chapter Level. Why'd you get involved with the IAAI? What do you get out of it?

Nicole Brewer: I get a lot out of it. I get a lot of learning opportunities obviously through the seminars, the local seminars here, but it's more important to me actually is the networking opportunities. I know we all talk about networking at these events because it's a lot of fun when we go to these conferences and everything, but really the IAAI has helped me make connections on a national and international level that have been invaluable throughout my career.

Rod Ammon: Yeah, I hear that from a lot of people and I think it's invaluable not just as having somebody to have an ear, but also resources that people use throughout investigations. Have you found that?

Nicole Brewer: Yes. Yes, for sure. I've made some great contacts with people throughout the fire investigation business and some of those folks have really been pivotal in some of the decision-making that I've made about furthering my career.

Rod Ammon: Glad to hear that. Seems like the advice was well-used by you from reading your bio and the things that you've been involved in. You've done a heck of a job over the years. So tell me a little bit about your unit, how it's organized, how you work together, and the communications that go on during cases.

Nicole Brewer: We are in Portland, Oregon. Our unit is structured, so basically we have one fire investigator on that's working a 24-hour shift at any time in the city, so we have what we refer to as a line personnel. So for line personnel, we do 24 hours on 72 hours off rotation for those personnel. Then just recently our unit has been making some changes to its structure, so we've recently been able to add two new members who work a day shift schedule and are now starting to assist us on the line with our investigations during the day shift only. Well, actually that's the seven-days-a-week structure now with those two. We have a person in training right now who's also working with me on scenes and then we have a detective from the police bureau who is an excellent asset for us in helping us write warrants, helping us with connections to homicide and to the bomb unit. Then we have our administrative assistant who keeps us organized and then we have our supervisor who is titled as senior investigator and he organizes our training and assists us on calls, helps us coordinate large-scale incidents, and that's kind of how our structure is set up.

Rod Ammon: Okay. So a lot of us spoke from out on the East Coast and the middle of America, wondering what it's like, what's Portland like to work in? Give a little background.

Nicole Brewer: Well, I'm sure as a lot of the folks out there know Portland's been going through some ups and downs over the last several years. I've found that Portland is a very interesting and dynamic place to work. I think our structure in our unit makes it so that we really rely on each other and on other resources in our city, whether they be police, the local ATF office, state, it's a great place to work, but we've definitely had our hiccups over the last several years where we've run across some serious challenges.

Rod Ammon: Yeah. I think a lot of cities in the country have had those, so don't feel bad. You're not alone. I'm wondering anything you want to talk about related to the cooperation? I mean you've already sort of given an intro that you work with ATF and state police. Is there something specific that nurtured that relationship?

Nicole Brewer: Well, as long as I've been in the unit and that's about 16 years, we've always had a good relationship with our local ATF office and the state police. We also foster relationships with our mutual aid agencies. We're trying to become more involved even with the local private investigators and trying to cooperate with them in assisting us in our investigations. Of course, there's some things that we have to be cautious of when we're coordinating with private entities, as I'm sure you're aware, but we've always had those positive relationships with those local agencies. I don't think that there was any one triggering event that brought all those groups together. It's just a matter of good communication with those organizations and trying to forecast where we might need assistance because we're not a really big unit. Maybe so in comparison to some of the really small agencies around the country, but for the most part we have one investigator responding to scenes and we really need to make best use of the resources that we have.

Rod Ammon: Sounds like it. It also sounds like you've got a great track record. So do you have any advice you'd want to share with how fire and law enforcement can work better together specifically in solving arson cases?

Nicole Brewer: Sure. I think probably one of the first things that organizations can do is just open those lines of communications with your local law enforcement because there are a lot of ways that we utilize our local law enforcement to assist us in our investigations. Some of those might be so simple as just assisting us in securing the scene when we've got our hands full, when we initially arrive, getting initial identifying information from witnesses and players in our investigations, just identifying those folks and getting an initial statement and getting that contact information. So when we as a solo investigator might be tied up trying to do the scene investigation, they're tracking down that information that we can follow up on later. They've been excellent for that kind of assistance. They also have access to the Forensic Evidence Division, which is part of Portland Police. They're able to assist us, but most police agencies have some kind of forensic specialists that can assist us on scenes with maybe something like photography, assisting us with getting fingerprints, or handling evidence for us. So really I think just as far as advice to other agencies out there, particularly smaller ones, is just open those lines of communications and find out how we can help each other in these investigations.

Rod Ammon: Sounds good. And it sounds like it's worked again very well, so it's a good intro to where we're headed and that's the case that earned you IAAI Investigator of the Year in 2022. There's a lot of, let's say, old-fashioned police work here. You want to tell the story?

Nicole Brewer: Sure. I think the case you're referring to is the Bobby Lee Alsup case. He was a young man that we hadn't identified him early in our investigations involving him. The way things started was that we were getting a series of small fires in the Northeast part of Portland and multiple small fires like trash cans just available combustibles out near the sidewalk or street. He rapidly escalated within about a week or two weeks time to start trying to ignite vehicles and we noticed that this was occurring in the same area of the city and we didn't typically see that kind of rapid escalation. So we were keyed into that and at that time, before budget cuts, our unit actually had two full-time investigators on duty, and so my partner Jason Anderson and I started recognizing a pattern in the way that these fires were being set. So we mapped it out and realized that it was happening along a certain path of the city and a certain street and during a certain time of the evening, and so we decided, you know what? Let's just go out there and get some boots on the ground and go see if we can catch this guy in the act. And just as we were getting ready to deploy that evening to go out and do a little bit of patrol activity. We got a phone call from one of our local police who we communicate with our local police about serial fire-setting activity around the city so that they can maybe step up the patrol a little bit in that area.

Rod Ammon: Nice.

Nicole Brewer: So one of the local officers had identified a young man in the area who he had asked to check the young man's backpack and had found some fire-setting materials in his backpack. He had a number of newspapers and lighters, and I think he had a sledgehammer or a small sledgehammer in there too, but he didn't have anything to arrest the guy at the time, and so he was let loose, but he wanted to make us aware. So he gave us that heads up and gave us a description of the young man and told us what his name was. So we went out basically with just that information about a possible subject in the area that we might be looking for. Well, when we got out there... I'm sorry, go ahead.

Rod Ammon: Oh, I'm sorry. I wanted to interrupt you quickly because first of all, it sounds like a great heads up and we're going to find out more about that, but a sledgehammer? Do we know... You made my ears perk up a little bit.

Nicole Brewer: Yeah, yeah, a sledgehammer. In our investigations involving him, we didn't see any damage that we could connect with a sledgehammer, but the types of crimes he was committing, he's got a bit of history and he had a bit of history at that time. So those may have been for some other kind of criminal purpose. We don't know for sure what he was using that sledgehammer for actually.

Rod Ammon: All right. Well, I had to ask.

Nicole Brewer: Oh yeah, sure, sure.

Rod Ammon: So now you move ahead, you're on patrol.

Nicole Brewer: Yeah, so we're just getting to the area where we want to start paying attention, and as we're getting there, we notice a young man who sort of matches the description, but we were seeing him from somewhat of a distance. So we're like, hey, that guy kind of matches the description and just as we're rounding the corner, we noticed that this guy kind of gives us this look like he spends a little extra time watching us as we're coming around the corner. Now we drive in unmarked vehicles, so he might have seen something on our vehicle that said police to him, but we're not sure what exactly he was looking at, but he kind of gave us a little longer look than we might normally expect from an everyday citizen just going about their business. So we made our way around the block and we decided to start just kind of patrolling around the area. Well, as we're doing this, we start smelling smoke and of course, we're quickly rolling down our windows and trying to figure out where is this coming from. We're looking between cars because just prior to us going out and doing these patrols, he had started trying to ignite vehicle fires. He was stuffing newspaper into the fuel ports of the vehicles and then lighting them with a lighter. Fortunately, a lot of our firesetters don't have great knowledge of fire behavior, and so that was a very unfruitful attempt for him to start those fires. But in his mind, we ended up finding out later. He actually thought he was blowing up cars. So anyway, we're looking between cars, trying to spot some evidence of a recent fire set or an individual trying to set a fire. We're not finding anything. We made our way around the block and take a look down the street and there is smoke billowing out onto the street, and I tell my partner, Jason, I'm like, "Jason, we got something going on down the street right here," and he steps on it. We head down that direction and we've got a fire inside an attached garage. It was set in a recycle bin inside the garage, and we jump out of the car. My partner Jason, he immediately gets on the radio, starts calling in the fire, and we get the companies responding. At the same time he gets on the police channel and he's calling for a canine and a police perimeter to be set up because we believe we had a suspect in the area in the immediate area. So all of that's happening all at once. He goes into the garage, grabs the recycle bin that's actively burning and starting to encroached across the ceiling, and drags it out of the structure. I go get the occupants out of the house and alert them to the fire, and we were able to get that fire quickly suppressed. Just after the fire crews arrived, we communicated with police and let them know that we had a possible identification of a suspect and that we would like them to go over and check the address for the person that the police had identified earlier that day. So they go over to his residence and they end up finding wet footprints going up to his house. So we end up talking to the father there is actually a foster dad, and he tells us that his foster son, Bobby, had just gotten home about 15 minutes prior and we ended up going in and speaking to him. We found the backpack in there and we did end up making an arrest. Bobby did end up confessing to us that he set the fires and he was kind of what we might refer to as a stress fire setter. So he would have a bad day at work and when he was on his way home, he would just set a series of fires and he would never stick around to watch them. That's part of the reason why he thought he was blowing up cars, but obviously, that wasn't what was happening. But he was rapidly escalating, so he was just about five months post his 18th birthday. So he was charged with arson and with multiple counts of attempt arson two. And fortunately, we were able to contact this individual and get him off the street before he did significant damage to people's homes and structures and-

Rod Ammon: Yeah, I guess nobody was hurt.

Nicole Brewer: Yeah. Yeah, fortunately, nobody was hurt by this individual, and our staffing in our unit has changed a little bit now, so we're not able to give quite as much attention to these small fires when they're happening around the city. But I think that that was definitely one of those cases where keeping a close eye on the small incidents and watching for that escalation ended up leading to the prevention of a serious incident that could have cost lives.

Rod Ammon: Yeah, wow. I mean, first of all, it sounds like a lot of quick thinking by you and your partner, not only going in and getting the source of the fire away but getting the people out of the house, setting a perimeter. I mean, this sounds like one of those best-case scenarios when somebody says what went right. It sounds like you guys had it all. Other things that you want to point out about this case that you might want to share as far as interest to other fire investigators?

Nicole Brewer: Well, I think once again with regard to this particular case is having those good lines of communication with your local law enforcement. I mean, one of the key things that ended up leading to the arrest of Mr. Alsup was that we had that communication with the local officer in the area who had identified him as just... I don't know the right word off the top of my head here, just a subject in the area that might be of interest to us and communicating with us about that as soon as they got that information. So just having those open lines of communication and then just making our local law enforcement aware when we're seeing a series of fires in a particular area. They've been of great help to us on multiple incidents where we've had serial fire setters, we've had other serial incidents that involved many more fires. We had one that was over 80 fires set before we were able to get him. Another with over 140. So I think it's really important that those lines of communication are established and utilized.

Rod Ammon: Yeah, it sounds like-

Nicole Brewer: But also just... Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Rod Ammon: No, as I said, it sounds like a lot of things really went the right direction. I'm sorry to hear that your unit sounds smaller or some of your assets are a little bit less available, but you were going to go on. I'm sorry.

Nicole Brewer: Yeah, I think just knowing what your police agencies are capable of too, knowing that they have canines out there and that they can get a canine in the area that can potentially start tracking from the scene of one of your fires back to where an individual might be. Just getting a perimeter set up knowing what your police are capable as far as setting up a perimeter when you've got serial fire-setting activity happening actively and just utilizing those resources. It's really important these days when we have limited resources available. I mentioned about our unit being a little smaller now than it was back then when we were able to actually go out and do these kind of patrols. We had a significantly smaller call volume at that time too. I think our unit was running on average about 150 fire investigations per year per investigator. And over the years recently, particularly during the riots in Portland, our fire investigators were getting upwards of five or 600 per investigator per year. So the way the cities work, city government works sometimes. Sometimes you're just expected to do more with less, and I think that that's kind of the position we're in now. Unfortunately, that's resulted in us having to triage out some of the smaller acuity calls.

Rod Ammon: I was going to ask you about what you see as far as trends in the fires that you investigate, but you've already started to talk about that. I don't know whether we would call the riots trends, but anything else you might want to say about trends or changes that you've seen in the recent years?

Nicole Brewer: Well, I think probably one of the most drastic changes that we've seen in our unit is the involvement of homelessness in the cause of many of our fires. There's a substantial relationship between a number of our fire causes and homeless activity. We've seen this both at small levels involving just small trash fires, tent fires, sidewalk type fires all the way up to fully involved greater alarm warehouse and structure fires. We've seen a lot more homeless involvement, and that's something that our city continues to try to work on, and it's a big issue of debate right now in our city, and I'm sure clear across the country, but that's definitely an area where we're seeing some issues arrive, and I think it's also changed how we do some of our investigations too.

Rod Ammon: I bet. It seems like that issue, the homelessness issue is in a lot of cities across our country and I'm wondering any smaller tactical advice that you can give to folks? Any things that you've been doing as I don't know, to put a bandaid on a bigger problem, as you say the city's working on it?

Nicole Brewer: Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that our city has done to try to help with the situation, not just with fire involvement, but just with police involvement and particularly with the relationship between homelessness and mental health issues, is we are trying to utilize psychiatric professionals to assist us in some of our call responses. So we have response teams that can go out and assist us when we have mental health issues that are going on in relation to some of our fires. So if we encount an individual who's having a mental health issue and is acting out in some way, and part of that is causing fires, we get those psychiatric professionals out to the scene that can assist us in managing this individual and possibly talking them down to a point where they're willing to cooperate and willing to admit themselves to treatment of some kind, not just drug treatment, but mental health treatment. And that's been helpful in the past.

Rod Ammon: Well, I'm really glad to hear that you have some of those resources, some mental health professionals that you can call on. I feel like, I'm not sure whether this is true, but it sounds to me like in a lot of places that's not so easy to make happen.

Nicole Brewer: Absolutely. I think that we have a definite shortage of mental health professionals, and Oregon is one state in particular that really suffers in that area as far as the availability of mental health professionals to assist in any way. We've got limited institutions where we can treat these individuals and just limited people to do that kind of work. So I think we're very fortunate to have our program is called Project Respond, where we have a mental health professional that responds out with an EMT that can assist us on some of these incidents, and their support is invaluable and their professional opinion is invaluable also because they can assist us with things like medical holds on these folks that are carrying out fire setting behavior that isn't safe for the community, isn't safe for them, and it reduces the involvement of use of force on some of these individuals and everything. So I think we are very fortunate to have that, and it's very, excuse me, very new to our city, and maybe that's something that will become more and more common as it shows success in our city and maybe across the rest of the country.

Rod Ammon: Well, it sounds like it. Just in arson, but in a lot of other things that are going on or fire setting I should say. But yeah, I'm just glad to hear that glimpse of nice news that there are some folks that are able to get out there on the streets and help some of these folks out, which in turn helps you and as you said, puts those holds or creates a follow-up that could be well probably lifesaving and certainly meaningful to the community. You mentioned something else. You mentioned a fire, I think it was Northwest 23rd gas explosion. Do you want to tell a little bit about that?

Nicole Brewer: Yeah. The Northwest natural gas explosion was a major incident that happened in our city where we ended up with three injured firefighters. And at the time that I responded on this incident, it was immediately post-explosion and when I arrived on scene, there were multiple buildings surrounding the seat of the explosion with broken windows and structural damage. When I arrived, we had three firefighters down in a parking lot, probably about 20, 30 yards away from the structure. I looked over and I saw these three firefighters bleeding in that area, one laying on the ground. The chief on this particular incident was trying to get the incident stabilized. At that time, we had wires down and it was just a lot of chaos happening at that time. And one thing that we had recently been working on in our city was establishing line of duty death protocol. I mean, it's always a sad thing to think about is the loss of one of our own on an incident, but it's definitely something that we don't want to be unprepared for if it does happen. So I think that the fact that we were working on that just prior to this incident was beneficial in how this incident in particular ended up getting handled. So the approach that I took to the scene was kind of in line with how I had started trying to create initial actions for fire investigators on a large-scale incident that could possibly involve a line-of-duty-death. I had recently taught about this to our other fire investigators, and the way I described it was throwing out the anchor. So the main thing that we're trying to do, and one of the most challenging things that I think we're trying to do as fire investigators on these large-scale incidents is stabilize the scene and preserve it for fire investigation. And that can be really difficult to do, but if we identify these four main steps, I think that we can accomplish that and it can really help reduce the stress and anxiety that these fire investigators are having when they're showing up on these major incidents where there's still suppression activities that are happening. One of the major steps is just to secure the scene, and one of the things that we'll do in that case is utilize the police and possibly if they're available crews on scene to assist us in that. So police are great at setting up like a civilian boundary to keep people back, keep people from getting in there and interfering in the scene and keep people safe. We can use our fire responders to assist us in establishing an incident working area, and then we as investigators can after our initial assessment, establish responder boundaries. So one of the responder boundaries on this Northwest Natural gas incident was the area where our firefighters, our down firefighters were being treated. We needed to make sure that we secured all of their gear. We needed to make sure that we secured equipment in place, and so we use blue and white tape. That was something that we introduced to our unit quite some time ago. It's not a tape that's typically seen around the US, but it's more common in the UK and in places like Australia, but it stands out to our firefighters. It doesn't look like caution tape that firefighters are accustomed to just walking right through. Doesn't look like emergency tape that sends a different message. It stands out as this is the investigator's area, and that's been very effective for our unit in establishing the responder boundaries where we only want investigative personnel to be entering. Another step is identifying witnesses for future contact. So we may not be able to do full-scale interviews when we have this kind of chaos going on an incident. So we'll oftentimes utilize police or if our fire personnel are available, have them assist as well. But police are great at identifying witnesses. They know the information to get the name, date of birth, contact information, a quick statement, what their involvement is in this incident, what did they see, what's their input going to be to the investigation. They get that initial information for us, and then we can follow up on that later. The third step is calling for additional resources, so get these other resources responding, whether that be the state police or the state fire marshal your local ATF office, make them aware. One thing I might mention here too with regard to ATF is that there may be some confusion about ATF when they become involved in an incident. When you call them for assistance, at least in our area, there isn't an assumption that they're going to take control of the scene. They are there to assist and they're awesome at it. So I really encourage people to contact their local ATF offices, mutual aid agencies. We also use our private investigation resources. When we have a major incident like this, there's a really good chance that insurance companies are going to be involved and they have the ability to get heavy equipment out to these scenes for us, get security set up for us. So when we're not able to give immediate attention to this scene, they can get perimeter fencing set up and hire security to come out there and make sure that nobody goes into this scene until we're ready to start a full-scale investigation with all the resources we need. We'll call investigation task forces, obviously our local police resources, including any forensic teams that may be available, and then we'll oftentimes ask command to give us a chief and a chief will act as our liaison or our logistics rather. They can assist us with things like getting us the food that we need, getting us a shelter set up so that we have a place to operate out of the element, getting a restroom there on the scene. These are all critical things when you have a large-scale ongoing investigation and having a chief assigned to us is really helpful. Then the fourth step is just starting documentation. I mean, it's getting out there and photographing everything. Photograph all sides of the structure. If you have the ability to get aerial photos or get a drone up in the air, start getting those initial photos, photographing the suppression operations, the use of any power tools, areas where we may have prolonged burning. That's one thing that we've noticed has been something that we definitely want to document in the ending stages of suppression is areas where we have prolonged burning and ongoing exposure protection because these can create confusing patterns with regard to origin, fire origin. I mean, when you have constant hose lines on a certain part of the structure, it can make it look like that part of the structure was affected last when actually it could have been where things began. It just happens to be where the fire crews had their water right away. So getting that kind of thing and then also just photographing areas of possible forced entry, whether that be by fire crews or otherwise, and photographing our witnesses and bystanders. So those are the main four steps, and if you can utilize police and fire crews to help you with the first two securing the scene and identifying witnesses, then really what it puts on the fire investigator is just getting resources coming and starting to document. And that can really help stabilize a scene and just slow everything down. And that's why we refer to it as throwing out the anchor. Basically, we are trying to make a smooth transition between an emergency to an investigation, and sometimes that can be really, really difficult to do when you've got a lot of adrenaline flowing and a lot of activity happening. We really need to make sure that we prevent further destruction of the evidence and establish that smooth foundation for an investigation. So it's really important to stabilize that scene at the very beginning.

Rod Ammon: Your city is very lucky to have you. No, I talk to a lot of people. I hear a lot of different points, but you not only you sound like a great addition to any city to have as an investigator and a team leader if you are but to be able to put all of that information so concisely out there and to be able the person training with you right now is also very lucky. So kudos to you for the good work you've done and the way that you've been able to clearly concisely communicate those steps because they really are, from everything I've learned so important to, as you say, transition from a fire to an investigation. You mentioned two things, and it was right before you talked about throwing out the anchor when you were dealing with the potential of line of duty death, and I just wanted to give a plug out there to the Fire Hero Learning Network. It's another network we work on with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, and they have a program, they call it TCOOO, to Taking Care of Our Own, which helps you prepare. And you might have been starting to talk about that, but from what I've learned, your point about being ready for that, especially when it's a horrible thing, but it's also something to be very good to be prepared for because it can provide peace and order to a situation that could be even worse than it already is. So sounds like you think about those things. So great there. I also would like you to finish a little bit on the gas explosion on more about what happened and what you found out.

Nicole Brewer: Sure. So one of the things that was really key in what we ended up finding out about this investigation was the timeline. So in this particular incident, this explosion happened early in the morning. I believe it was a Sunday. So we were fortunate in that it was a Sunday because Northwest 23rd is a very popular part of Portland and typically is heavily occupied at that time of day during the week. So we were fortunate in that there were no serious civilian injuries on that particular incident. The excavation work had started at about 8:30 in the morning on this incident, and at some point between 8:30 and 8:51, the crew hit a natural gas line. This was a one-inch steel gas line. At 8:51, they put in a call to Northwest Natural Gas. It wasn't until 9:07 that there was a call put into our dispatch center. The 9-1-1 call was received, that was a 16-minute delay between the time that Northwest Natural Gas received a call about the broken line and when our 9-1-1 call was received and responders were dispatched, the companies were immediately dispatched. They were out by 9:08, 9:11 was when our companies first arrived on scene. And by 9:38, the explosion happened, and that was 47 minutes between the time that Northwest Natural Gas was called and when the actual explosion occurred. So one thing that was really concerning to me was that significant delay between notification to Northwest Natural Gas and notification to 9-1-1. Obviously, we need that time as responders to get people evacuated and so we've had some communications with Northwest Natural Gas about that delay and about the instructions that we often see on commercials from the gas company about if you smell gas call Northwest Natural Gas at whatever their number is, instead of calling 9-1-1, which was a bit concerning to us. I'm not sure how exactly that has been resolved if it has at all. I mean, the last commercials that I've seen are still giving the same instructions, but that was a significant issue on this particular incident. So once this gas line was hit, it caused a significant bend in the pipe and actually disconnected the pipe completely from a connection point. So we had full flow of natural gas going underground. It was under the sidewalk, and I don't know if you're familiar if your viewers are familiar with Portland, but Portland's kind of known for its underground city, and we happened to have an underground stairwell under the sidewalk there that was just an abandoned stairwell that gas was flowing into, and that was basically flowing into the basement of the adjacent structure where there was a bagel shop. They smelled natural gas and they ended up leaving the business fortunately and we ended up finding out that the ignition had happened in the basement by watching surveillance video from across the street. So interestingly, in this surveillance video, we were able to see the movement of the flame front through the basement window so we could see what side of the structure the ignition occurred on. So we were able to even isolate a little bit further where the potential ignition was, but I think that the more relevant issue on this particular investigation was how the gas leak had happened in the first place. One of the challenges that we had on this particular incident, aside from the injured firefighters and just the whole chaos of a massive explosion happening with crews on scene, was that we had multiple interested parties. We had OSHA on scene because we had firefighter injuries. We had the Public Utility Commission there. Northwest Natural Gas of course had an interest. DEQ was there. We had the construction companies that were there who had been working in the area. EPA ended up getting involved because of asbestos that was known to be in the structure that exploded. Then we had several insurance companies from multiple structures and insureds in the area. So trying to coordinate all of those resources, allow those individuals to be on scene, but keeping them in an area where they could observe but not interfere was a challenge. We did end up setting an area up in a parking lot across the street from the structure where all of our interested parties could gather, and as we were conducting our investigation, if there was anything that they wanted to take a time out and photograph and come and take a closer look at, all they had to do was holler at our ONC, which was myself, and just kind of put a halt to things, and we would let them come in and get photographs and make sure that they weren't moving anything out of the area where it was found or anything, but giving them that opportunity to photograph as they went along. We tried to keep that involvement as much as we could.

Rod Ammon: It's just another good example of how fire investigation can help reduce fires overall, and in this case on a much bigger level where actual city and a gas company are learning and hopefully being motivated to do things quicker from the good work that you've done with developing that timeline and everything else. So thanks for that. I guess the last thing I want to cover on that is how did our firefighters turn out?

Nicole Brewer: Of course, I was hoping that you would ask that our firefighters all ended up being okay. One of our firefighters did end up with pretty serious injury to his leg, but he is back to work now. He was promoted to lieutenant and he's doing pretty well from what I understand. So all of our firefighters fared well, and I'm sure that they have those traumas that come with experiencing an accident like that. But from what I understand, everybody's working through those situations and I think our guys are all going to be okay.

Rod Ammon: That's beautiful news. Thanks for sharing that.

Nicole Brewer: Absolutely.

Rod Ammon: I guess before we let you go, I wanted to learn a little bit more about the research that you're doing for your Ph.D. Can you talk about your area of interest?

Nicole Brewer: Sure. Yeah. So the work that I'm doing for my Ph.D. is on cognitive bias in fire investigation. And really what I'm trying to look at is how fire investigators are impacted by cognitive bias and what kind of things make us more vulnerable to that situation. And some of the areas that I've noticed that are significant catalysts, for lack of a better term to the influence of cognitive bias on our scenes are things like the environment that we typically work in, particularly in the public sector. So when we're working in the elements and we're in a very uncomfortable environment, when we're working with time pressures, when we're working when we're very tired and exhausted, and when we have organizational pressures or media pressures to come to a conclusion, all of these things can act as catalysts that can push us towards making our decision that we might not be entirely ready to make based on actual evidence. So my studies are trying to... I've developed a training program to work on minimizing cognitive bias in fire investigation and what kind of tools we can use for that, what kind of strategies we can use to help reduce bias in our investigations through organizational policies or just individual investigator techniques that can help reduce that and help us protect ourselves also in the trial environment and how we can document our knowledge of cognitive bias, first of all, and its impact on us. But then how we can discuss that in a court environment and in our documentation to show that we are not only aware of it, but we are trying to minimize it as much as possible? And a huge part of that obviously, is utilization of the scientific method, but also in articulating how we're using the scientific method to consider multiple hypotheses and addressing specifically how we're excluding alternate or alternate hypotheses, alternate sources of ignition, and everything. Not just saying something like it wasn't smoking, but it wasn't smoking because there was no evidence of smoking material on the scene because the occupants denied smoking in the structure and actually articulating clearly what our evidence to exclude was. I think that doing some of those things may help us in fire investigation, help us conduct even more thorough investigations, and also to protect ourselves in depositions and trial environments to articulate our thoroughness.

Rod Ammon: I might have missed something while I was taking notes, but you were talking about, as you're talking about minimizing cognitive bias, you mentioned specific factors. Did you bring those up or could you mention those?

Nicole Brewer: Specific factors that play a role in cognitive bias is that what you're referring to?

Rod Ammon: Yes, yes.

Nicole Brewer: Yeah. Some of those factors are things like time pressures, organizational pressures. Some organizations they may weigh the success of their investigators, of their investigations by the outcomes of the investigation, like whether or not a cause was determined. So if fire investigators are under that pressure to make a cause determination, that could potentially push them into making a decision that they don't have adequate evidence for. So I think that investigative agencies need to be very cautious about using that as a measure of success in their investigations. And what might be more appropriate is measuring the success of their investigations by how smooth the investigation was carried out, how thorough the investigation was done, the completeness of the documentation, and not really base it so much on whether we have a cause or an undetermined. Because we all know that I mean, you can have a very thorough investigation that results in an undetermined, and you can have a very recklessly completed investigation that has a cause or at least a suspected cause. So that's one of those factors that can sometimes act as a catalyst to cognitive bias on our scenes. Then just the whole exhaustion factor, media pressures to make a cause determination. A number of these things can act as catalysts to our susceptibility to cognitive bias on scene. So finding ways to reduce that and then finding ways to check ourselves in our investigations to make sure that we're considering all of the possibilities, I think are things that we can do to help address that. And of course, in my studies, we go a lot more in-depth, but I think that's kind of where we are right now as far as just a brief summary of what my studies are about.

Rod Ammon: Well, we'll look forward to reading and learning more about the dissertation. It is your dissertation, right?

Nicole Brewer: Yes, sir.

Rod Ammon: Using the right word. Okay. Looping back to one thing that you said earlier. You're talking about a small unit that's even busier today, maybe learning more about this the note that I had here was sleeplessness or exhaustion and how that affects things will stimulate more people power for your team. I hope that happens where it's needed across the country. So I think your work sounds phenomenal and learning so much about you today has been wonderful. Anything that I'm leaving out that you'd like to share?

Nicole Brewer: Oh, I don't think so. I'm one of those people that can talk forever about fire investigations, but I think we've covered a lot today and I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss this with you and to maybe get some of these ideas out to other people across the country about how they can work maybe a little bit more efficiently in their investigations. I'm happy to hear from any of your viewers that might want to learn a little bit more about how we do this.

Rod Ammon: Well, I appreciate your time again, so much. I learned a whole lot more than just about how you won IAAI Investigator of the Year and congratulations on that. And again, thank you for all the information you've shared with everybody, and I hope you'll be safe out there and look forward. I hope we'll see you at ITC.

Nicole Brewer: Yep. I'm planning on being there.

Rod Ammon: All right. Well, I'll see you there-

Nicole Brewer: Thank you very much. All right. Take care now.

Rod Ammon: Thank you too, Nicole. Be well.

Nicole Brewer: Bye-bye.

Rod Ammon: Now for news from the IAAI, the 74th IAAI International Training Conference in Expo is fast approaching this year's ITC is in Cherokee, North Carolina from April 23rd through the 28th. Registration closes Sunday, April 16th, so there's still time to join your fire investigation colleagues from around the world at this one-of-a-kind training and networking event, confirmed presenters and instructors include Dr. Daniel Madrzykowski, Dr. Elayne Pope, Dixon Robin, Barry Grimm, Mark Svare, David and Stephen Kircher, Dr. James Quintiere and Randy Watson. Available training sessions cover a wide spectrum of fire investigation topics, including wildland fire investigations, strategic suspect interviewing techniques, arson for profit, fire investigation units, digital forensics, child and adolescent forensic interviewing, and investigating fires resulting from marijuana hash oil. There will also be case studies on the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College and the 1995 Bricelyn Street Fire. To read more about the training opportunities expo guest programs and more, visit IAAIITC.com. That's IAAIITC.com. This podcast and CFITrainer.Net are made possible by funding from a fire prevention and safety grant from the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program administered by FEMA and the US Department of Homeland Security. Support also comes from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and voluntary online donations from CFITrainer.Net users and podcast listeners. Thanks for joining us today on the podcast. Stay safe and we'll see you next month for the IAAI and CFITrainer.Net. I'm Rod Ammon.

IAAI ITC website