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How can I work with Emergency Response Personnel to preserve evidence at incident scenes?
Collision investigators jokingly refer to fire departments as "evidence eradication teams". In workplace incidents evidence is frequently moved or obliterated by either in house emergency responders or production demands. While this answer deals with highway collisions the same thinking can be applied to workplace situations. The advantage in the workplace is that we can specifically train our responders to address evidence preservation by including them in investigation training.
When large fire departments or Emergency Medical Services respond to incidents they have Standard Operating Procedures to follow regarding scene preservation. Their first concern is worker safety, and the Officer in Charge will position equipment to protect the immediate area. A secondary consideration is to avoid disturbing evidence such as visible skid marks and debris. Many departments take 35 millimeter and digital photographs of incident scenes for both training and liability purposes, and are generally more than willing to share their first on-scene photos with any investigator.
Typically, as investigators you will arrive at the scene well after emergency response crews. In addition to taking your own photographs you will want to draw a sketch of the scene. Locate items in your sketch as you found them, not as you believed them to be. After the emergency response crews have finished their job approach the commander and gain his assistance to review any physical evidence questions.
Emergency response personnel can be a great resource to an investigator as they can identify the positions of people in vehicles, road and weather conditions, as well as what evidence may have been moved. Working with sketches, photographs and reports the emergency response crew will be able to provide you with details as to the scene as they found it, and what through necessity was moved. With this new information you can make a second sketch of the scene to document the original position of physical evidence.
Thanks to Mark Lindenbach for his help in answering this question and for the accompanying photo. Mark is the Corporate Safety Coordinator with Aluma Systems and a Captain with the Namao Fire & Rescue Department.
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