The Challenges of Post-Fire Assessments, Part 1
Image: The Sand Fire near Santa Clarita, California, U.S. in July 2016. Credited to Getty Images and Attila Adam.
The opinions, claims, conclusions, and positions expressed in this post are those of the author or person quoted and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, AIHA®, The Synergist®, or SynergistNOW.
AIHA’s chief science officer, Michele Twilley, DrPH, CIH, recently spoke with Dawn Bolstad-Johnson, MPH, CIH, CSP, FAIHA, about the assessment of structures that have been damaged by fire. Their conversation covered instrumentation, sampling and analysis, issues for homeowners, forthcoming guidance from AIHA’s Real-Time Detection Systems Committee, and other aspects of post-fire assessments. Bolstad-Johnson is CEO and founder of Kaizen Safety Solutions in Phoenix, Arizona.
This is the first of two posts that present transcripts of Twilley’s conversation with Bolstad-Johnson. It has been edited for length and clarity.
This post is available in the March 2025 issue of The Synergist.
Comments
Re: Control Example
Thank you for your question Corey. There are control samples at each fire. For example chloride anions are not positive for each sample location. Rather, the presence is an indication or a clue, if you will, of where the smoke may have migrated in a building. Smoke does not distribute evenly. It is just one of many clues that we use. There are common sources of chloride anions such as table salt. However, we are testing in typically hard to reach areas such as wiring in attics that already appears to be covered in soot, char and ash or the inside of a canned light or the top of a canned light in an attic. The DOE published a Fire Protection Handbook VOL II (1996) that discusses chloride anions from fire and the impact on electronics. Hope this helps!
By Dawn Bolstad-Johnson on July 25, 2025 12:57pmControl Example
Dawn, do you have data (amounts) of all these chemicals, especially chloride anions, in a residence that has not had a fire smoke intrusions, a control, so to speak.
By Corey Bender on July 23, 2025 1:26pm