Fire Dept. Hosts Dalton High School Forensics Students

Thursday, May 11th, 2023

Forensics students at Dalton High School have been studying arson investigations, and on Thursday the Dalton Fire Department gave them a chance to put their knowledge to the test. The DHS students visited the DFD Training Center at Station #2 Thursday morning for some demonstrations about how real world arson investigators find out how fires are started and how they spread.

"This is the first year that (DHS forensics classes) have gotten into arson. They asked us to do a presentation for them a couple weeks back and talked about how they were trying to figure out what to do," said Captain Damion Epps. "We worked out a plan with them to do this field trip."

Caption: Forensics students from Dalton High School visited DFD Station #2 on Thursday morning for a lesson in arson investigations

The students rotated through three different stations that were set up by the fire department for the field trip. At one station, the students were given ash and fire debris from a recent training burn to examine for evidence. At another station, fire department personnel demonstrated electrical arcing so students could see how faulty wiring can start a fire. At the last station, students were able to see fire in action. 

"The students had built some popsicle houses as part of their class," Epps said. "At one of the stations we set fires in each of those popsicle houses and we went over fire behavior and they saw how they would burn."

Below: Dalton High students sift through ash and debris from a recent training fire to search for clues about how the fire was started, and at another station they watch as popsicle houses are burned to demonstrate fire behavior