Fire Investigator

AT ANY time of the day or night Queensland Fire and Rescue Service fire investigator/station officer Adam Gwin could be called to investigate a fire. It is a role which has seen him investigating grass fires at Mareeba in north Queensland to shop blazes at Kawana on the Sunshine Coast.

Officer Gwin said he decided to apply to join the fire service after having seen an advertisement in the local newspaper. He was managing a mechanical workshop at the time. “I was at a turning point,” he said. “I either had to start my own workshop or get a job which had some career progress and held some interest. “I’m an outdoors type and, when I saw the ad for the fire service, I applied for it and went through the process.”

After having sat through a written application, aptitude test, interview and government medical, Officer Gwin was put on a waiting list until the day in May 1994, two years later, when he was offered his first post in Mareeba. Two weeks later, Officer Gwin walked through the door of his first fire station.

“When I joined in 1994, I lived on the Gold Coast and my first posting was to Mareeba in far north Queensland and it seemed like it was on the other side of the world,” Officer Gwin said.
He said it had been an “eye-opening experience”. “I always understood it was putting out fires but didn’t fully realise it was also attending accident scenes and hazardous spills,” he said.
“It’s an extremely hands-on job and I had never considered the emotional side of it.

“In the fire service, you’re called on when things go wrong and you are dealing with people suffering, grief and death.” Officer Gwin said fire service personnel often adopted their own strategy to deal with grief and tragedy. “You hear in the service that people use black humour to deal with tragedy and everyone deals with tragedy in their own way,” Officer Gwin said. “For me, I just switch off and do the job,” he said.

After 14 months at Mareeba, Officer Gwin was posted back to Brisbane, to work mainly at Annerley and Balmoral in suburban Brisbane and at Kemp Place in the heart of city. After having successfully passed the fire scenes examinations test, he began on a regular roster in the elite state unit in June 2004. Officer Gwin said sifting through a fire scene was often like “piecing together a jigsaw puzzle”.

“It’s not like on TV in CSI,” he said. “You don’t work out what happened in an hour. It can take some time.” Pinpointing the origin and identifying the cause of fires holds a great deal of personal satisfaction for Officer Gwin. “With fire investigations, you look at the cause and the origin and determine where the fire started and how the fire developed,” he said.

“What knowledge you gain can help prevent further incidents and can help the public if there is bad/faulty equipment, poor workplaces or problems with building structures. It’s not only fires and where they start. “We also have an excellent relationship with a multitude of government agencies like the Queensland police, scenes of crime, the arson squad, scientific section, the department of industrial relations and the department of natural resources and mines.”

After having completed a Diploma of Fire Investigations and a Graduate Certificate in Fire Investigations from Charles Sturt University, Officer Gwin now trains budding fire investigators.
The 12-month initial fire investigation course covers areas including protecting and preserving scenes, conducting initial interviews, giving evidence and conducting fire investigations using forensic equipment.

Mock scenarios are also conducted to test investigation skills. While it takes dedication and hard work, Officer Gwin said it was a role which he would highly recommend. “You start at the bottom and work your way up through the ranks,” Officer Gwin said. “If the opportunity is open and you have the ability grab it with both hands and run.”