WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The D.C. firefighters assigned as the lead investigators in probes of the most significant blazes in the past year had little experience in arson cases and were not certified as fire investigators, sources told The Examiner.

In six major fires — including the Eastern Market fire, the town house fire that injured four fire fighters, and the five-alarm blaze at the Mount Pleasant apartment — the department used firefighters who had been detailed from rescue or engine companies to head up the probes.

“That’s bad,” said John DeHaan, a leading arson expert and author of “Kirk’s Fire Investigation,” the most widely used textbook for fire investigations. “It’s like taking someone with a degree in physiology and turning them loose as a surgeon.”

 Although a certification is not a guarantee that the investigator will do a perfect job, DeHaan said, “it’s at least a start to assure that you have a baseline knowledge and you’re not going to make things up as you go along.”

District fire officials downplayed the certifications and said it doesn’t matter who the lead on the case is because the investigators in major fires work alongside veterans from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and with D.C. police detectives in the D.C. Arson Task Force.

“Chief [Dennis] Rubin is not going to put anyone in a position that is going to discredit the agency,” Battalion Chief Kenneth Crosswhite said. “These people meet the standards.”

To justify the qualifications of the firefighters who were placed in charge of the major cases, D.C. fire officials point to a National Fire Academy course that was taught in-house in 2006.

But National Fire Academy training specialist Doug Williams and former D.C. Fire Marshal Richard Fleming said the classes had nothing to do with qualifying for anything. They were designed to interest firefighters into becoming investigators because the department had a critical shortage at the position.

Those classes were later called into question by a D.C. inspector general’s investigation that found that that District’s instructor gave test questions to a select group of students before the exam.

Don Wood, the District’s first certified fire investigator and now a fire safety officer for Unified Investigation and Sciences Inc., said being properly certified is especially important for lead fire investigators in the courtroom, where they go up against certified professionals called to testify by lawyers in criminal cases and lawsuits.

“How can you go into court and say with a straight face that you have a basic knowledge of fire investigation?” Wood asked.

The lead investigator is in charge of directing the probe, completing the final report, certifying to its truthfulness and testifying under oath, experts said.

The District’s lead investigator assigned to the Georgetown public library fire, for instance, was Dave Williams, a firefighter who had been detailed to the arson unit from Engine Company 19, according to fire department and arson task force officials.

Williams has since returned to the firehouse, officials confirmed. In that case, the District has sued Dynamic Corp. for negligence, saying a subcontractor for the Hyattsville company used heat guns that ignited the fire. The company contends that it didn’t have heat guns at the site.

That illustrated the problem with having inexperienced, uncertified firefighters assigned as lead investigators, experts said.

smccabe@dcexaminer.com