German fire consultancy, Brandursachenermittlung, located in the city of Bochum, investigates the cause of fires across Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The company’s consultants examine vehicles and residential and industrial buildings, with the intention of revealing defective components, fraud or workshop mistakes.

Brandursachenermittlung, has purchased two Tiger volatile organic compound (VOC) detectors from ION Science for use as part of the fire investigation activities it conducts on behalf of insurance companies, the legal system, vehicle manufacturers and private clients. The advanced hand held photoionisation (PID) devices replaced old competitor systems which had proved unreliable due to poor sensitivity levels.

The Tigers are used to facilitate the detection of fire accelerating substances. Only detected substances or measured values of authorised laboratories are accepted in court. To avoid excessively high costs in every single case, the German consultancy uses the Tigers to select the cases which are worth pursuing.

Marie Fabisch from German fire consultancy, Brandursachenermittlung:
“We first had the chance to test the Tiger during a demonstration by another fire investigation company. We were less than satisfied with the sensitivity of our old detectors from another manufacturer – often we smelled petrol before our equipment detected it. They were also increasingly prone to error. We liked the Tiger as soon as we tried it so purchased two of the devices from ION Science Messtechnik.”