Up in smoke

David Sheppard plays with fire.He torches cars, furniture, buildings and just about anything else combustible. And sometimes he suits up in head-to-toe fire gear and douses the flames.

“Can you think of a better job?” asks Mr. Sheppard, a senior fire research engineer at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The 40-year-old New England native works at ATF’s Fire Research Laboratory in Beltsville, part of a 176,000-square-foot facility that includes a forensic science, and alcohol and tobacco labs.

The fire lab reconstructs fire scenes to determine how fires begin and spread, and it catalogs the way particular objects burn. The lab facilities are big enough so that engineers can reconstruct a small office building — indoors — and then watch it go up in smoke.

“We can build a three-story house under here, bring in train cars, buses. Anything that will fit through the door,” said Mr. Sheppard.

The research is used in criminal investigations, to train fire scene investigators and to develop scientifically sound methods for law enforcement.

Mr. Sheppard and his colleagues want to determine how a fire started and who might have set it. If it was arson, the researchers want to help state or local prosecutors convict the arsonist.

“We want to give investigators a leg up and try to give them an advantage. First, did a crime occur, and then try to figure out who did it,” he said.

There were 45,000 arsons in 2001, the most recent figures available, according to the National Fire Prevention Association. More extensive data from 1999 indicate that intentionally set fires caused 622 deaths and $2.7 billion in property damage.

Mr. Sheppard graduated into the field from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, one of two U.S. schools that teach fire protection engineering, and earned a doctoral degree from Northwestern University with a dissertation on the spray characteristics of fire sprinklers.

Originally Mr. Sheppard wanted to be an aerospace engineer, but the field did not look promising in the early 1990s, when he was graduating and many defense firms were laying off workers.

But fire is easily as enchanting as flight.

“I’ve seen thousands and thousands of fires. A lot of times we can figure out what happened. A lot of times we’re still surprised. That’s the reason this job is so fascinating — there’s lots of gaps and holes in our knowledge that we can fill in,” he said.

Mr. Sheppard teaches fire-investigation classes and is currently involved in 12 arson investigations. The cases take years to complete, and until they have worked through the courts, he can’t talk about them.

“When I’ve been here for 10 years, I’ll have completed investigations,” he said. Right now, Mr. Sheppard has 3½ years with ATF, too little to see a case through court.

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