On The Record With ... John Agosti

After a fire has dwindled down to smoldering ashes, firefighters often investigate the cause of the blaze.

For years, John Agosti was part of the Skokie Fire Department’s fire investigation squad. Now, the 65-year-old Wauconda resident works the private sector of the field, still investigating fires, but for a different kind of clientele.

Agosti and his team of investigators go to hundreds of fires each year, looking for evidence that indicates the origin of a fire. Sometimes they’re accidents; other times, Agosti goes to court to prove a person is guilty – or innocent – of arson.

Agosti went on the record with Lake County Journal reporter Stephanie N. Lehman to talk about being a fire and explosion analyst. 

Lehman: What does your job as a fire and explosion analyst entail?
Agosti: I'm owner and president of this company, John Michael Agosti and Associates. We do fire investigations and explosion investigations and consulting and expert witness work for a variety of clients. Our clients are insurance companies, attorneys or sometimes individuals. We do work for most of the major insurance companies; we do work for most of the major attorney firms, both plaintiff and defense-type work. And typically, they're hiring us for fire origin cause – what started the fire. We do a lot of fire fatality work, too, where people get injured or die in a fire, and the family is filing a personal injury suit against somebody, maybe the owner of an apartment building or some product that might have been defective, so we get hired to investigate that … .
Besides field work, where you're out in the field actually looking at fires, we do a lot of testifying in court ... because it's all litigation; it's all about money.

How do you proceed with those investigations?
I'm a retired fire chief; so, I worked for the Skokie Fire Department for 28 years. And for a good part of that time, I did fire and arson investigations for the fire department, which people are probably more familiar with, with the movie "Backdraft" and things like that that were based on an actual fire investigator. So, with the fire department, we would go out immediately after the fire was extinguished, investigate it, process the fire scene, see if it was arson or accidental ... .
However, now, I do it on the private side as opposed to the public side. So, a fire occurs in someone's house, the fire department comes out, they extinguish the fire. The fire department may investigate it – they do their own investigation. Well, now, after they're done, the homeowners report it to their insurance company – "Hey, I had a fire here, help me." So, the insurance company comes out to settle the claim, and part of what they do is they hire firms like  us … to come in there two, three days after the fire to see if there's some liable party, with two reasons [in mind] – one to make sure their insurer didn't start it intentionally, but more frequently, that if there's a third party that's responsible for the damage to this house – for instance, let's say a TV started the fire and it's defective – well, the insurance company is going to file suit against the manufacturer of the TV for the $250,000 for the damage to the house. The insurance company is going to pay the homeowner the $250,000 to rebuild the house, but they want to get their money back.

Why is your job necessary, and when did a need for your job come around?
On the fire department side, the reason fire departments investigate fires is to catalog causes in an effort to prevent them from happening again, or to prosecute a criminal who may have started it. The criminal aspect is fairly simple. That's the reason – you have to prove someone committed arson and prosecute them. But if it's accidental, the need is to prevent it from happening again. Let's say the TV started the fire. And what's going to happen is, there's going to be an investigation. May come to find out that TV and the thousands of the TVs out there similar to it have a problem, so now you initiate a recall, so that's the purpose. In addition, codes are developed because of fire investigations. For instance ... years ago, after it was determined that cooking in a restaurant-situation on a big cooking line with deep fryers is somewhat of a dangerous situation. So, the codes came out that said they have to have these big hoods with exhaust systems with sprinklers in them. That was developed because of the investigations that came forth.

So, you've seen how these investigations have changed history?
Absolutely. The Iroquois Theater fire here in Chicago … in the early 1900s ... what they would do is people would go in and sit down, and when a performance started, they would lock the doors, chain the doors, so people couldn't sneak in during the performance. And about 100, 200 people died [in a fire]. That developed the code which is called the life safety code – you not only can't lock doors, there have to be aisles so you can get out. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a tragedy to invoke a code.

What is the most obscure fire cause you've ever investigated?
There's a lot of them that are obscure. From a bird bringing a lit cigarette back to a nest on a rooftop eve that starts a fire, there's so many causes. Electrical, mechanical – probably every single device or operation that goes on inside of a house has started a fire. However, what are you going to do, live in an igloo? Many times we'll have ... a fireplace fire that does quite a bit of damage. And after our investigation, the home owner goes, "When we rebuild, we're not going to put a fireplace in there." Well, if you did that with every single cause, you'd have nothing in your house. I mean, we have computer fires, we have outlet fires, we have light fires. You just have to make sure that everything is kept up to code and maintenance.

How do you tell if a fire is the result of arson?
By the elimination of all accidental causes. For example, we had a fire [a few weeks ago] in a vacant building, and there was no gas to the building, there was no electric to the building before the fire ... that eliminates a lot of things. We did a weather report – there was not a lightning strike. Kind of leaves not too much. Unfortunately, it's not that easy all the time because the majority of our structures do have gas, do have electric. In order to determine whether it was an incendiary, which is the same thing as arson or a set fire, we go through the exact same process and try to eliminate all other causes, and when it only comes down to one possibility, that's when we have the ability to say it was a set fire.

When you're doing these investigations, is there a most common cause of fires?
Sometimes it's undetermined. We have a lot of fires, probably about 20 percent, that are just undetermined – there's just too much damage, and you just can't tell what started it. And probably the leading causes are electrical, sometimes human involvement, such as unattended cooking on the stove – [people] leave a pan on. Many times, [it's] failure to maintain something – haven't had your furnace checked out in 15 years and it decides to malfunction and cause a fire.

Any advice for people so they don't become one of your clients?
I have two bits of advice. First, make sure you have operable smoke detectors in your house, because no matter what causes the fire, if you get early warning through a simple smoke detector, at least you're going to get out. And as far as preventing fires themselves, typical good housekeeping, preventative maintenance, meaning keep things maintained, especially as your utilities – air conditioning, furnace, water heaters, it ranges. Be careful around stoves, things like that. We do a lot of fires involving injuries and fatalities ... it's not just loss of property.

Agosti lowdown

Who he is: Fire and explosion analyst
Village of residence: Wauconda
Family: Wife, Bonnie; and three sons, Michael, Mark and Johnny
Hobbies: Golf and travel
Favorite local restaurant: Lindy's Landing
Website: Visit www.arsonexpert.com