Join us for our end-of-year meeting where we will hold elections for the 2026 NTFIA officers. This is a great opportunity to network with fellow investigators and discuss the future of our organization.

Following the election, we will have an open discussion on the impact of emerging technologies in fire investigation, including 3D scanning, LiDAR, sketching, and AI. Come prepared to share your insights and experiences on how these advancements are shaping our field.

This is free to our members. Lunch from Babe’s Chicken Dinner House will be provided, but you must register. We look forward to seeing you there for an engaging and informative meeting.

This course will focus on batteries, their operational principles, failure mechanisms, and basic investigative protocols associated with battery fires.  This course will specifically discuss lithium-ion, lithium-polymer, and lithium-metal batteries, their applications, and how and why these batteries fail.  After this course, the fire investigator will have a greater understanding of the fundamental concepts associated with batteries and how to best investigate battery-related fires.  This course will also discuss safety issues and regulatory guidance, including evolving hazards related to these types of fires and investigative methodologies and include a case study discussing battery failures and pre-cursors.

Instructor Bio:
Brittany Brown is the Chief of Fire Prevention at the Leawood Fire Department.  Brown has previously served as a Division Chief for the South Adams County Fire Department and has worked as a Deputy State Fire Marshal for both New Mexico and Texas, and served as a fire marshal and firefighter in New Mexico, Texas, and Kentucky. Brown has worked as a Professor at Eastern Kentucky University and currently teaches for the National Fire Academy, The Southern California Safety Institute, and previously taught for the New Mexico Firefighters Training Academy. Brown is currently pursuing a PhD in Forensics from Oklahoma State University and holds a Master’s Degree in Systems Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Brown also serves as a SME/committee member for NFPA, ICC, NICET, OSAC, and IFSTA. 

Training Session: Youth Fire Prevention (YFP) Program Development The Dallas Fire Investigation Division will present its current processes and strategies for Youth Fire Prevention. This class is ideal for any department, city, county, or organization seeking to establish or enhance a YFP program.

November Monthly Meeting & Officer Nominations Following the training, we will hold our monthly meeting. The November meeting is crucial, as we will be accepting nominations for the 2026 NTFIA officer positions.

If you would like to volunteer for a position or nominate a colleague, please plan to attend. If you are unable to be present, you may submit your nomination by emailing admin@ntfia.com.

This class will be free to attend.

Lunch will be provided for all attendees. We look forward to your participation.

This lesson focuses on fire origin and cause investigations using both classroom instruction and hands-on exercises. Students will spend three hours in a classroom learning the theoretical foundations based on NFPA 921 and NFPA 1033, followed by three hours of practical fire scene investigation. The course will provide a comprehensive understanding of fire scene examination, evidence collection, fire dynamics, and report writing. This class will be capped at 21 students.

Lunch will be provided

08:00 - 12:00 Photography Class

12:00 - 13:00 NTFIA Meeting

Instructor: Dr. Paul Ayers.
Participants should bring and a good working DSLR or mirrorless camera.

This will be a two-hour class on preparing your hypothesis(es) for your fire investigation. The Goals for the course are:

1. Identify all potential ignition sources, not just the obvious ones.

2. Understand the critical flaw of using Negative Corpus.

3. Recognize and counter your own cognitive biases.

4. Apply the principle of Falsification to rigorously test your hypotheses.

5. Confidently determine when a cause is "probable" versus when it must be classified as "undetermined."

After the class, NTFIA will host our monthly meeting.

Instructor - Joshua Detzel

*Class location is subject to change.

We had some cancellations and will not be having the Dallas YFP team. They had some last-minute developments, and we will try to get them re-booked for a future date. The meeting will be a general assembly meeting at the Irving & Grand Prairie Joint Fire Training Facility (4850 N Belt Line Rd, Irving, TX 75038).

11:00 - 12:00 - Officers’ Meeting

12:00 - 13:00 - NTFIA Monthly Meeting

Instead of a meeting, we will have a build day to prep for the upcoming class. We will build miniature burn cells.

We will take a break for lunch at noon, and have the monthly meeting. If you would like to attend the meeting, a Microsoft Teams invite will be available. You can use the same RSVP link below to sign up for the meeting, just mention attending via Teams.

Breakfast and Lunch will be included for those participating in the build.

We invite you to our upcoming June General Assembly Meeting on Wednesday, June 18, 2025, at 11:30 AM. Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees. For those unable to join us in person, a Microsoft Teams link is available below for virtual participation.

LOCATION: Irving and Grand Prairie Joint Fire Training Facility - 4850 North Belt Line Road, Irving, TX 75038

Captain Jason Martinson with the Lewisville Fire Department and his K9 partner, Celina, will be presenting at our April meeting. The presentation will be about an hour long. Captain Martinson will explain what he and Celina are able to do on a fire scene such as, how/why arson investigators would use K9s, what kind of training the K9s and handlers undergo, K9 resources in our area, reasons to call for an accelerant K9, what K9 handlers are looking for while on scene, how the handlers would like us to prepare the scene prior to their arrival, what kinds of scents the K9s can detect as well as what materials confuse them/can cause false positives, how to reference a K9 supplement in your report, what the K9 handler would be responsible for if your case were to go to court, as well as a question/answer session.