Special Fire Investigator Has a Nose for Clues at Suspected Arson Scenes

Buddy is a beige blur, his thick tail scything the air, his black nose skating the floor in search of gasoline fumes.

“Where is it, Buddy, come on, SEARCH, SEARCH!” barks Ventura County’s head fire investigator, Assistant Chief Larry Titus, who handles the county’s only arson-detecting dog.

Panting like a bellows, Buddy races through the Camarillo firehouse on his weekly training run.

Somewhere in the building is a sweat sock tainted with an eyedropperful of gasoline--almost too little for the county’s most sophisticated hydrocarbon-detecting instruments to pick up.

Titus, 53, hauls back on the leather leash to keep the 83-pound Labrador retriever from pulling him off his feet.

“Come on, Buddy, find it!”

Buddy stops.

He shivers all over, clawing open a cupboard door. Then he pokes his muzzle inside, grabs the sock in his teeth and pivots to face his master.

“Good boy, Buddy, good boy!”

Titus grabs the sock and they whirl across the polished floor, dog and master locked in a happy tug-of-war.

Play is Buddy’s reward. After a few seconds, Titus says, “Drop!” and Buddy, after a few more seconds and a few more tugs, reluctantly complies.

He is one of only five dogs in California trained to detect chemical-caused arson, Titus said.

With one dog stationed at the Orange County Fire Department in Fullerton, one in private investigation and one each at the state fire marshal’s offices in Sacramento and San Diego, Buddy is the only dog of his kind assigned to Ventura County and surrounding areas, Titus said.

He works about 90% of the time on Ventura County fires, Titus said.

Titus trained with Buddy for a month in April, 1990, at the Whitmer-Tyson Kennels in Redwood City. Buddy learned to detect 15 chemicals that arsonists often use, including gasoline, kerosene, paint thinner and duplicating fluid.

Off duty, Buddy is a big, goofy, friendly dog, good with Titus’ 2-year-old grandson and exuberantly affectionate toward adults.

But when Titus slips on Buddy’s leather collar, the signal that it is time to search, the dog becomes invaluable, worth far more than the $5,200 it cost the county to buy and train him or the $1,300 a year it costs to feed him, Titus said.

Firefighters must stay on the scene of any suspected arson until an investigator finds evidence or rules out the possibility that someone started the fire, he said.

If the building is heavily damaged, Buddy can pinpoint arson within 15 to 30 minutes amid debris that could take hours to search by hand.

Last month, Buddy helped investigators rule out arson in a toxic blaze at a Simi Valley furniture shop called Freedom Designs Inc., where his sensitive nose did a better job of sifting through the odors of burned glues, solvents and foam padding than any electronic sniffer could.

And in March, the Ventura fire commander on duty called in Titus and Buddy to search the burned remains of a five-unit apartment building where 2-year-old Sarah Galka died.

Titus and other investigators found a burn pattern where gasoline had been splashed on a transom, but they searched the building for other traces, Titus said.

“We searched that whole building, and Buddy kept coming back to the area where a trash can was. He kept picking up a piece of food,” Titus recalled. “I told him, ‘Buddy, it’s not yours, now come on.’ But when he hit on it three times, I said, ‘Can it and send it to the lab.’ ”

The lab found a chemical on it, indicating that the fire had been deliberately set.

The evidence found by fire and police investigators, helped by Buddy, led to a guilty plea last spring by Calvin Michael Mitchell in the girl’s death. He admitted setting the fire because he was angry with a former girlfriend. The blaze spread from the woman’s apartment to Sarah’s.

In August Mitchell was sentenced to prison for 25 years to life for first-degree murder and attempted premeditated murder.

Titus said he and Buddy are inseparable and ready for action any time.

“We’ll go anywhere I can travel to within a day,” Titus said. “He believes in me and I believe in him.”