"...telltale marks of an ignition point's spread."

[Muse]

I saw this in a story in today's SF Chronicle in a story concerning the warehouse fire in Oakland Friday night. I've often wondered how investigators determine where a major fire started. How do they do this, and how do they determine the cause of a fire (which I'm equally curious about)?

 

[Muse]

Read an article in today's SF Chronicle. They look for certain burn patterns that indicate a point of origin of a fire. Unless a fire levels a building, they can often/usually find burn patterns on walls. A V shaped pattern indicates that the fire started at the bottom of the V.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

For location it's a mixture of the marks left by smoke, heat and fire that point to the area where it began. Just a matter of knowing how each typically behaves to narrow it down. Ignition source can be a few different things such as chemical analysis, obvious signs, etc. sometimes it just best guess.

Find the area it began and you can begin narrowing down the cause.