The Fight Against Crime: Notes From The Battlefront : Staying Hot on the Trail of Arsonists

Fire investigator Steve Patterson searched through his file cabinet until he found a large, color photograph of an almost completely burnt-out bedroom.

“What we are looking for, here, is the burn pattern,” said Patterson, who holds the rank of captain and is the only investigator on staff with the Burbank Fire Department.

He is in charge of investigating the June 29 fire that destroyed the landmark The Castaway restaurant atop the Verdugo Hills. Days after the fire, he told the press that he believed the $1-million fire was “not accidental.”

He didn’t want to get into specifics of that investigation, but he was willing to speak in general about how fire is investigated.

“One of the most important things to determine is the area of origin,” said Patterson, 49, who has been with the Fire Department for 24 years. He has been the department’s fire investigator for the last four years.

“A fire, according to the laws of nature, wants to burn up and out,” he said. “It forms a V pattern.”

In the picture of the bedroom, along a charred wall and a damaged chest of drawers, a V-like burn line can be seen, neatly leading down into one corner of the room.

“That’s the spot,” said Patterson, tapping the corner.

A baby burned to death in this fire, which Patterson believes was deliberately set.

“It was one of those situations that was never resolved,” he said, putting the picture back in the cabinet.

In Burbank alone, there are between 100 to 200 deliberately set fires a year, Patterson said. Only a handful of these are investigated in detail, given the fact that he is a one-person department and that most of the fires are small, causing little damage.

The major cases he is now investigating in addition to The Castaway blaze are the $7.5-million fire that destroyed the Ledler Foundation building last year and the fire at the Permaluster wire factory, also in 1992, in which the losses were estimated at about $1.1 million.

Both remain unsolved.

“Often the evidence is circumstantial rather than direct, and so it’s sometimes difficult to prosecute,” he said. “A lot of the direct evidence burns up.”

Besides the burn pattern, Patterson looks for evidence of a break-in or forced entry. “Most of the arson cases we get are between 2 and 4 a.m.,” Patterson said. “There is less chance that someone setting a fire would be seen leaving the scene.”

He also looks for clues in the soot, broken glass and blistered plaster patterns. An absence of much soot, for example, can indicate that the fire was so hot, it burned off. This information can help determine what fuels might have fed the fire.

Patterson also interviews neighbors, friends and, when appropriate, employees to try to determine if the arsonist fits into one of four traditional categories:

* Heroism: Some fires are set by people hoping to be thought of as heroes by reporting them. Patterson confronted one man with this last year, and a series of similar fires ended.

* Pyromania: The perpetrator of numerous dumpster fires in 1990 in Burbank was found by a surveillance team staked out in the area the arsonist favored.

* Spite: Patterson said car fires are sometimes the work of a person seeking revenge.

* Greed: A Burbank man was successfully prosecuted last year for twice setting fire to his business in an attempt to collect insurance. Patterson also noted that professional arsonists, who charge fees to torch a building, are for hire in the area.

Patterson expressed pity for some arsonists, especially the pyromaniacs. But unlike some criminal investigators, he harbors no respect for even the cleverest of fire setters.

“Arson is a childlike response to an adult situation,” he said. “ ‘If I burn it up,’ they think, ‘it goes away.’ ”