Playing with fire

Facilitator: Kate Grimwood is a PhD student with the UTS Centre for Forensic Science. Her research focuses on forensic fire investigation.

Kate Grimwood: Essentially what I do is I look at flexible polyurethane and look at how it behaves on a holistic level, so I look at it pre-flame, post-suppression when the fire's been put out, and how much polyurethane you might need in a cell or a structure to reach flashover.

Facilitator: What is polyurethane?

Kate Grimwood: Polyurethane's just foam, a flexible foam, so you might be using it in your bed, in the carpet underlay, it's in clothes, condoms, surface of your benches in your kitchens, cushions. A lot of houses might have it as insulation or probably part of a building, so it's used quite prolifically within the house.

Facilitator: So, then, what's a flashover?

Kate Grimwood: A flashover is when, in a cell or a structure that everything in the room has reached its auto ignition temperature and it ignites without being impinged by flame. It's a phenomena that is not survivable by anyone or anything that’s in the room and if perchance a firemen or firefighter is in the room at that time, with the PPE that they’ve got on, they’ve only got about 20 seconds to get away from that situation and survive.

Facilitator: So what you're studying is how polyurethane may contribute to a flashover?

Kate Grimwood: Yeah, I'm studying how much polyurethane, be it as furniture or soft furnishings or whatever form you might have it in, how much you might have in a cell or a structure and how that’s proportional to the time it takes that cell or that structure to achieve flashover.

Facilitator: So what made you get into this?

Kate Grimwood: Who doesn’t like fire engines and firemen, really, but that’s probably not why. I got into it because I always really wanted to be in a situation where I could help people and that made me really interested in forensic science, before CSI and all those shows came about, before it came really popular. Then, as we went through our classes and stuff, I started to realise that I had a bit of an affinity for the fire side and the explosion side so I went on to do my honours in that.

There wasn’t actually an honours subject available, so went and started talking to the Fire Investigation and Research Unit at New South Wales Fire Brigade and they presented me with all these options. The one that I got, which was almost the precursor to my PhD, just was a really interesting one and one that we could achieve, so that’s why I went with it.

Facilitator: Tell me about how you do your research.

Kate Grimwood: I've just done a series of burns in Queensland which has helped give me some real data and numbers for how long it takes to reach flashover based on how much polyurethane you have in the room. During those burns as well I was doing some large scale gas analysis, so I'm just finishing off that experimental work and looking at those numbers as well. In addition to that, I'm looking at the post-suppression gas analysis, so what's coming out after the fire's been put down and for a period after that because that actually affects the emergency services people that come to the fires.

Are they safe? If they're not in full PPE, are they in an environment where why could be inhaling some really nasty, toxic stuff?

Facilitator: It must be really satisfying knowing that you're doing research that’s going to directly help people.

Kate Grimwood: Yeah, it's really, really satisfying. I'm so lucky to be doing it and I feel blessed. Even when it's really hard and horrible and I hate it, I still feel really blessed. I just keep going and the thing that drives me to keep going is that I know that when I'm finished at least one person's going to get saved. One person's life's going to be saved and I feel really lucky to be a part of that. I know that when I give it to the fire brigade or I give it to the correct government departments that we can take steps to getting things changed to help people, so it's really good.

Facilitator: What kind of opportunities are there for somebody with your skill set?

Kate Grimwood: Well, there's a couple of different careers. It depends which was you want to go. If you want to be a fire investigator, you can go through the fire brigade, you can go into government bodies, you can work for the polices and you can test for ignitable liquids or you can actually investigate the fires themselves for cause and origin. You can do it on a private basis for insurance companies or for your own company and test for ignitable liquids that way as well, or you could even go internationally and work overseas.

Back to the UTS Science: Playing with fire video