Fire safety
The heat is on to stay safe FIRE FORENSICS IS AN EXPERT FIRE INVESTIGATION COMPANY WHICH HAS DEALT WITH NUMEROUS INCIDENTS AT MINE SITES ACROSS THE GLOBE.
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n Australia, mine sites face strict regulations to ensure operations are undertaken safely. With countless variables requiring consideration at these sites every day, sometimes incidents do occur. The dangers surrounding heavy mining equipment are often associated with collisions and operator error. Yet certain factors, such as flammable liquids meeting hot surfaces on these vehicles, can lead to them catching on fire. Other kinds of mobile and stationary equipment can also catch fire. It can be difficult for the workers on site to determine the true nature of what caused a fire to start, and it often requires bringing in a specialist. Fire Forensics has been solving these cases since 2017, with experience
in the mining industry, private and public sectors. It was founded by Jim Munday, who brought his experience of conducting forensic fire investigations in the United Kingdom’s public sector to the company. “Fire Forensics is a relatively new company. It was founded based on a smaller business – JW Munday and Associates – which was a partnership between myself and my wife started in 1998,” Munday tells Safe to Work. “Using our expertise that had been developed over 20-plus years of working in the public sector, we thought it was a good idea to make that available to private clients. There were always issues with private clients getting hold of good quality fire investigation.” Munday and his wife moved their
Fire Forensics’ investigations help to determine the cause of a fire.
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business to New South Wales in 2003. He says they initially provided services to insurance companies and legal representatives in the civil and criminal area, and quickly expanded into mining and heavy machinery fires. “We had a wide base and built the business up from there; at that stage I started to see there was a need for a high-quality fire investigation with a forensic mindset that wasn’t always readily available to clients across Australia,” he says. By 2010, demand for the company had grown significantly and Munday recruited more fire forensic experts, including nowmanaging director Belinda (BJ) Jones. “In 2017, we decided as part of my retirement succession planning to form Fire Forensics as a company,” Munday says. Fire Forensics focusses on fire and explosion investigation in Australia and abroad, with its findings determining how a fire started and how future fires can be prevented by using scientific data. Munday says the company has points of difference from some of the other suppliers in the market that clients seemed to appreciate. “We are very committed to the scientific process and objectively analysing the facts and material before forming an opinion. We’re also committed to explaining our findings very clearly in basic terms without going into technical jargon,” Munday says. Fire Forensics uses its understanding of fire dynamics, and fuel and ventilation factors to trace fires back to where the ignition occurred. “If a fire is not tremendously large, very often some sort of internal investigation
