Fire investigator Bill Cosgrove sees it all the time: a candle, a flame, and a finger going through it. “People are curious about fire,” he says. “Children are the most curious. You don’t really get burned when you run your finger through a flame, if you go real fast. I don’t do it because I’ve been burned.”
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Cosgrove, 56, joined the Chicago Fire Department in 1969 and spent 18 years as a firefighter before becoming an investigator. “Getting burned is probably one of the most severe injuries you can encounter in your life,” he says. “I had my fire clothes on, I was reaching up, I had opened a portion of the ceiling above me, and the roof was burning. The tar on top of the building liquefied from the heat and began to run and flow. It came down in a stream right on top of me and it came up my glove into my sleeve. I bent down to get out of the way and that liquid tar splashed on the back of my neck. The pain is tremendous.”
Cosgrove’s third book, Accident or Arson?, is a firsthand account of the workings of the CFD’s Office of Fire Investigation. “Arson is the easiest crime to commit, the hardest to detect, and the most difficult to prosecute,” he says. “To prove an arson fire, it’s essential that all accidental and natural causes are eliminated first, then we begin a detail of the circumstances surrounding the fire.” One indicator he uses to determine the point of origin is to examine the lightbulbs left intact, because “a lightbulb tends to swell or goes oblong toward the direction of heat.
