Rocket fuel fires, and firefighter arssonists

[eelamb]

Recently in a class I took, we were asked to find information about rocket fuel fires. We also were assigned to find info on an arsonist named John Orr. He was a captain in California. I have a little research on him, but nothing much. Any help would be appreciated.

[Icerader]

Well, where do I begin. First , I'll start with Rocket Fuel fires. In the mid-80's there were a spate of arson fire in the great Northwest. These fires were arson in cause and the theory, and I repeat the theory was, solid rocket fuel cells were the accelerant used in these fires. These fires burned so hot and so fast, experts had never seen anything like it before. In some of the fires, the concrete floors had actually experienced the closest thing to melting known. The normal expectation of concrete is "spalling." It was believed that the only thing that burned with that type of BTU power was solid rocket fuel. There was never any trace of an accelerant detected. The belief here was that the fire burned so intensely it completely consumed the accelerant. Many investigators and scientists such as John DeHahn attempted to prove or disprove the theory of solid rocket fuel accelerants. As far as I know, it has never been officially determined. I heard one theory that the accelerant in some of these fire might have been powdered metal, such as aluminum or magnesium. That is what I know....there are articles written on the subject.

Now as for John Orr. I personally knew John Orr. I even took a couple of classes from him. He was a Fire Captain with the Glendale Fire Dept in Southern California. John was considered the guru of Fire Investigators. The Fire Investigator teacher of Fire Investigators. I would say that probably 80% of investigators in the late 80 had taken classes from Orr. John had an uncanny ability to solve fires. He could walk into a completely burned out building, walk over to an area and point to the spot where the fire started. He would then go on to tell you what the device looked like. Some of these fires were very big...some were wildland, some were fatal fires. In one of the early fires, a device was discovered. The device was printed and prints were discovered, unfortunately technology had not caught up yet. The evidence was held in P&E for years.

In the early 90's these fire were continuing. In one of the fires a device was recovered. Low and behold it was a match to the earlier one. It was sent in for processing. Now at this point the CalID system was up and running. The print came back to Orr. The ATF was called in and intense surveillance was conducted, some hi-tech. John was placed at the scene of a number of fires at the time they began. he was later arrested. He had written a book about a Fire Investigator arsonist that paralleled his career. John was convicted in Federal court for arson. He was serving time in federal prison. The State of California charged him with 2 counts of homicide for a least one of the fires. He was convicted a couple of years ago. He is serving a life sentence.

The case against him was very tight and was eventually made into a TV movie.

I was an Arson Investigator during the late 80's and the 90's. I was privy to some of the investigation before it was public knowledge. Before John was a suspect, I had a fire believed to be part of the trail. I was on a task force that looked into these fires. Once John was identified, all local investigators were taken out of the loop for preservation of the case. ATF ran the investigation exclusively.

I hope this information is beneficial to you.
Captain Bill Dumas


[This message has been edited by Icerader (edited 04-06-2001).]

[CJBFireConsultant]

For more information on the alleged HIGH-Temp Accelerant Fires, contact ATF Agent Steve Carmen from San Fransisco, California office.

He actually was involved in the investigation and research on these alleged fires and not only has authored papers on the subject, but toured the IAAI circuit lecturing on the topic. He has some interesting DOCUMENTATION to support his opinions. Many, if not most, of the fires where the cause was attributed to allegations of a high-temp accelerrant by the local public officials were later disproven and not accepted through the use of scienctific analysis and testing.



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Chris Bloom
CJB Fire Consultant

[eelamb]

Thanks for all the info. I checked out the LRC and they sent me a bundle of stuff. Keep it coming.