Apartment Bedroom Fire Investigated After the Room Was Cleared, Greater Houston (2020)

In 2020 a construction services firm working for an apartment community in the Houston area asked us to investigate a fire in a third floor unit. The parties and the property stay confidential.

An empty room

We inspected the unit about a week after the fire. By then the wall, ceiling and floor coverings had been removed, along with all of the furnishings, and the fire debris was gone. At the panel in the bedroom closet every breaker was off, and every conductor had been disconnected from its breaker and taped into a bundle, so no circuit could be traced back to its breaker. Our work had to start from what the building itself still showed.

The building as evidence

The remaining fire patterns, together with damage to the rafters above, placed the area of origin along the west wall of the bedroom. We then went through the wiring in the unit. The cable insulation was intact throughout the living space and melted only in the attic. We found no arcing on any circuit. The receptacles and switches had all been badly damaged by heat, which is expected in a room that burned and does not point to a cause by itself.

Accounts given after the fire placed the first flames behind a dresser, near a wall receptacle that fed a television, a phone charger and an extension cord. Those items had been removed before our inspection, and we were not able to speak with the occupant.

Testing each hypothesis

We worked through the possible causes one at a time, as NFPA 921 requires. A failure of the building wiring was ruled out with the evidence available: the conductors were in good condition and there was no arcing anywhere we looked. An accidental cause involving the contents could not be ruled out, because the contents were gone. The same was true of a mechanical failure of an appliance and of an intentional act.

Undetermined is a finding

We reported the area of origin and classified the cause as undetermined. The point of origin and the first material ignited could not be identified once the room and its contents had been removed. That answer is narrower than an owner may hope for, but it is the one the evidence supported, and it holds up better than a cause chosen only because the others were eliminated. Our fire and explosion investigation team handles residential and multifamily losses. If a scene can be held for a few days, use our forensic assignment form to reach us before it is cleared.