BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
EVENDALE -- Use your ears to single out a lone voice in a crowd. Then you'll understand how Pyra the arson dog uses her nose every day.
"She has to be able to discriminate between gasoline or other accelerants and all of these strong background odors you find after a typical fire," said Robert F. Gartner, the handler for Pyra, Ohio's first certified arson investigation dog.
The pair were in town for the Greater Cincinnati Regional Arson Fire Investigators Seminar. The 36th annual event, held Thursday and Friday at the community center, drew 250 investigators from the Tristate and several other states.
Mr. Gartner, who works for Nationwide Insurance Co. and for fire departments in 15 northeastern Ohio counties, demonstrated how Pyra can pinpoint a single drop of gasoline even when it's in a mass of charred substances. Each time, she sat and pressed her nose against the suspected substance, then waited for Mr. Gartner to reward her with kibbles.
Dogs have been used for arson detection in the United States since 1986. During the seven years Pyra has worked as an arson dog, more dogs have been trained in Ohio. In the Cincinnati area, Green Township firefighter Steve Claytor works with a dog named Sammy. The evidence the canines help gather is becoming increasingly admissible in court, and the dogs help arson investigators do their jobs more quickly and efficiently, Mr. Gartner said.
"It certainly increases your chances of finding an ignitable liquid," he said.
When Mr. Gartner worked without an arson dog, he would look around a fire scene and take his best guess as to where a fire started. Then he'd take numerous samples of carpet, wood or other materials and send them to a lab. About 20 percent of the time, the tests came back positive.
With Pyra's help, his success rate increased to 80 percent or more. Among the tests with negative results, Pyra may well have correctly detected a flammable liquid, but the instruments used in laboratories might not be able to pick them up, Mr. Gartner said. Experts estimate that dogs' sense of smell is 100,000 times greater than humans'. Although mechanical "sniffers" can be used by arson investigators, the dogs' noses are considered more accurate, Mr. Gartner said.
Not even the dogs, however, are 100 percent accurate.
Plastics, for instance, contain some of the same substances found in accelerants. When burned, they can give off odors that mimic those coming from a flammable liquid.
Still, the dogs are considered highly reliable and credible, Mr. Gartner said. Among the 500 fires he and Pyra have investigated, 11 arson cases have gone to trial, he said, and, "we have yet to have a jury not believe that the fire was intentionally set."
