Steeped in Blood (11 page)

I have tried to bring this to the attention of the large insurance companies. I have given numerous talks at their congresses and also at several high-placed meetings, such as the Thursday Club, a
monthly gathering of senior managers from the industry at which they discuss relevant issues. All of this has been to no avail. Money and power, as I have mentioned, are an evil combination.

In the early hours of the morning of 21 October 1994, a fire gutted a small family business in Brakpan – Brakpan Superette – leaving severe fire and smoke damage in its wake. The owners, two Greek brothers, had worked late the previous evening and, some time before leaving the shop at about 10 p.m., they had deep-fried some potato chips.

I was called to the fire the very next day by Commercial Union Insurance. Peter Evans, the former claims manager, would use no one but me. Peter was a straightforward person and wonderfully fair, who always said to me, ‘Give me a reason to pay the claim.’ He liked the way I worked. I would present him with a full exposé on what I had found, a report with all the details – both the good and the bad. By this stage, Peter had retired and been replaced with Hugh Gardiner.

I found a typical single-source fire that had started in the region of the chip fryer and had spread to the adjacent aisle. The rest of the damage to the shop was purely smoke damage.

In any fire investigation, if the cause is claimed to be innocent, that must be taken seriously until other compelling evidence emerges. There was no evidence to the contrary in my view: my report reflected that the fire had been caused by the chip fryer, which had been left switched on.

About two weeks later, I received a phone call from Commercial Union’s new claims manager, Hugh Gardiner, to say that he had obtained two other expert reports that disagreed with mine. He sent these reports to me, and I spent an entire Saturday perusing them and writing a report on them. I disagreed with the two other experts, and motivated my reasons in the report. All the role players were called to a meeting at Commercial Union, where the matter was discussed. Certain observations of mine were challenged by a
loss adjuster called Basil Pahl. The upshot of the meeting was that we all reconvened at the burnt-out premises, where we established that my observations were correct.

After another two weeks, I received a phone call from the claims manager to say that it was a case of ‘two against one’ and that they were going with the numbers. I replied that I was naturally disappointed, but asked if they would release me from the case, seeing as they thought I was wrong. I gave them an undertaking that I would not approach the insured, but we agreed that if I were to be approached, I would take the case. My words to Gardiner were, ‘Let us all get into the ring and box and see who will win.’

My wife was outraged by the behaviour of the insurers, and urged me to proactively fight the case. I resisted the temptation and waited. I was eventually approached by the insured, and two years later, the matter came to trial. The crux of the matter was now whether there had been a single fire or two fires. Two fires would have meant that it was a deliberate burning. In court, my expert opponent from the CSIR claimed that the fire could not have spread across the aisle.

Anyone who has been in a supermarket would know that the aisles are often festooned with brightly coloured bunting that hangs across the ceiling. My view was that the bunting over the chip fryer had caught alight and burnt across until it had burnt through and fallen into the second aisle, causing the fire to spread (see
photo
). I had several photographs of the burnt bunting in the appropriate places across the aisle and, to make doubly certain, I purchased two rolls of the bunting from Koo products in Midrand.

I took my son, James, who was four at the time, to the Brixton Fire Brigade, where we tested my theory. He had dressed up in fireman boots and a helmet, and was very excited about the visit!

At the fire brigade’s premises, I festooned the firehouse with the bunting, set a fire under it and sat back to photograph it as
it caught alight. The streamers behaved exactly as I had predicted. Armed with this evidence, I returned to my laboratory to write the report for the court proceedings.

The counsel for the supermarket owner was Bernard Ancer. He and I were having a drink in chambers the night before the court case when in walked Johann Strauss, who was acting for the insurance company. Their expert had scorned my explanation of how the fire could have spread across the aisle. He had reasoned that the bunting was made of plastic and would have melted at temperatures well below those needed to ignite them. It was a good theory, but completely wrong.

Strauss joined us, and I felt it perhaps appropriate to spare him some humiliation the next day. I happened to have some bunting flags with me, and in a spirit of mischievousness, I suggested to Strauss that he tear one of them in half. He did so, and to his dismay he discovered that they were not made of plastic, but of paper. That was the end of the case. He could not go into court with an ‘expert witness’ who had failed to notice such a basic thing, and he advised his client to settle the matter immediately. It was settled that evening, and Commercial Union ultimately paid about twice as much money for costs as they would have paid had they settled the case in the first place.

I always believe in going the extra mile – putting in that little bit more effort, digging that extra area or taking additional samples. This story illustrates perfectly the dangers of theory over practical experiment, and also demonstrates the nature of insurance company thinking. I had believed that the insurers in this matter would have learnt their lesson, yet they chose to ignore my advice and made utter fools of themselves. They never briefed me again. I was hurt at the time, but as time passed, I realised that it was good riddance.

I learnt afterwards that Peter Evans, when he heard that Hugh Gardiner had gone with the other experts against me, took him
on before the court case and bet him ten rand that he would lose against me!

In all fairness, evidence left by a fire can be misinterpreted if one does not have enough experience in this field. Low burns, for example, do not always indicate foul play. In other instances, traces of certain substances found at the scene that seem to be the source of a fire may have been introduced only afterwards: firemen may have traipsed through a fire scene carrying flammable substances on their boots; or the water they used to douse the flames could have carried flammable substances. One has to be very cautious about approaching the evidence at a fire scene, as it is easy to make mistakes or become confused.

This kind of confusion was well illustrated in the case of the Buccaneer Shoes factory fire. The factory is based in Maitland, Cape Town, and, as the name suggests, it manufactures shoes. On 5 May 2003, the factory burnt down, and it was alleged that the managing director had paid two of his employees to set the place alight. Three sets of experts ended up investigating the scene – one from the police, one from the insurance company, Mutual & Federal, and me. I was acting on behalf of the managing director.

Each expert had his or her own interpretation of the fire scene. Theresa Bester from the police said that there had been five separate fires. The insurance expert said that there had been four fires in completely different places, which did not correspond with the police findings. A so-called ‘arsonist’ had made a statement containing much of what the insurance investigators wanted. This statement had been made under duress, but, even so, the place where he had admitted to setting the fire did not correspond to where the police and CSIR expert alleged it had been found. In the end, the prosecutor did not rely on the state forensic expert. This is rare, as generally the state would go to great lengths to protect their own expert.

The truth was that the Buccaneer factory blaze had been a single-
source fire. Advocate William King, who was representing the managing director of Buccaneer, brought me in to investigate. It could be shown quite clearly that there had been only one fire. There was clear evidence of the so-called ‘arsonist’.

It eventually came out that one of the workers on the factory floor had started the fire. He, in fact, was never prosecuted, as he turned state witness. He admitted to deliberately starting the fire, and another arsonist who was not a state witness said that they had started the fire to cover their tracks: they had been stealing components of shoes – soles and uppers – and would take them home, glue them together and sell them to craft markets and other outlets. In no instance did they involve the head of the factory. The managing director was acquitted. Mutual & Federal, in trying to avoid paying the claim, had alleged that Buccaneer was on the brink of financial ruin. At the end of the day, the full claim was not paid out, yet the business is still in operation today.

A fire in which the rage of controversy is almost as hot as the flames is that of the Paarl Print factory. Just before 8 a.m. on 17 April 2009, a devastating fire broke out at Paarl Print in the Western Cape. Employees felt and heard a shock wave and then saw a wall of flame spread across the entire roof of the 300-metre building in a matter of seconds.

The building housed offices, printing equipment, a bindery and a storage area, and of the 300 employees, around 150 were on the premises at the time of the fire. Many were trapped inside: thirteen people died as a result of smoke inhalation, and many more were injured. Firefighters battled the blaze for hours, and by 1 p.m. it was under control. The entire building had been gutted.

I was called in by one of the directors of the company to investigate the cause of the fire. When I arrived at the scene the following day, Paarl Media chief operating officer Emarie Botha and chief executive officer Stephen van der Walt gave me a very hostile reception. I was not allowed onto the scene, the excuse being that only the police were allowed access at that point.

I was also surprised to find Anthony Young investigating on behalf of the insurers – he should not have been on the site: he has previously been discredited in a court case and is not registered with the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions, which is illegal if you are operating in this capacity. Any person operating in the field of forensic science needs to be registered, just like a practising doctor is registered with the Medical and Dental Council. I was very unhappy with the fact that he was there.

I was also extremely irritated by the fact that the police objected to my presence there. The forensic policewoman, Theresa Bester, had come across me before in court, during the case of the Buccaneer fire. In that case, her evidence had been largely discredited by William King and me in cross-examination. She did not approve of my presence now, and one could only wonder why.

A major fight erupted on the scene, and I withdrew. The directors of the company wanted to discuss the matter with me further, but I declined, and I removed myself from the investigation.

The Paarl Print fire is a very strange story, of which the basis has not yet been established, I believe. There has also been an ominous silence in the press about it. The reports at the time stated that a microwave oven had blown up, causing the fire. I do not believe this. Some of the evidence was allegedly disturbed, which apparently caused subsequent problems.

More recently, the inquiry into this fire appears to indicate serious dereliction on the part of the owners. Allegations of malfunctioning fire equipment, blocked escape routes and little attention paid to fire regulations may well see the light of day when this matter gets to court, and we shall see if there is any truth in it.

The extent to which Paarl Print is liable
can
be established, but only if the evidence from the fire is properly examined by an impartial forensic investigator. What is crucial is that the Queensberry rules apply: only if there is fair play will the truth come out.

‘Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.’

– ALBERT SZENT-GYÖRGYI,

Hungarian biochemist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine

On 1 October 1986, 177 miners died and scores more were injured in one of the worst mining disasters in South African history. A welder’s spark had ignited the foam linings in a mining shaft in Kinross, in the former Eastern Transvaal. The political ramifications of the accident were felt far and wide: black miners had died because the white mine management appeared to have cut corners, compromising the safety of their workers.

Kinross is a sleepy town situated on the far eastern side of the gold reef. It owes its existence to the gold mines, which dominate the landscape. Gold mines employ thousands of black South Africans, and were notoriously dangerous places in which to work in the 1980s. The men were usually unskilled and had to work at depths of up to 3.658 metres and in temperatures reaching 30 ºC.

This particular mine at Kinross was owned by Gencor, one of
the big Afrikaans mining houses that had established a foothold in the traditionally English industry, which was dominated by Anglo American at the time. Mines are extremely vulnerable to the gold price: when prices are high, it’s all systems go; when prices are low, every last cent counts. Kinross deep-level mine was no exception.