When considering multiple points of origin, what should be eliminated as possible causes?

When evaluating multiple points of origin, it is important to understand how fires spread and the factors influencing fire behavior. Convection, radiation, and direct flame spread are mechanisms through which heat and flames travel from one point to another. These processes can cause a fire to ignite additional materials or areas beyond the initial ignition source.

In cases with multiple points of origin, fire investigators are tasked with determining whether these separate points ignited independently or if they were influenced by the spread of fire from a singular source. Since convection, radiation, and direct flame spread describe how a fire propagates rather than factors that initiate ignition, they should not be considered causes for the multiple points of origin. Instead, investigators focus on identifying specific ignition sources and conditions surrounding each point of origin. This distinction is critical in forensic fire investigation, as it helps to clarify whether a fire's development was due to multiple independent sources or results from a shared source's effects.

Thus, eliminating these processes focuses the investigation more on looking for specific ignition sources or conditions that resulted in multiple ignition points rather than misattributing those points to the natural spread of fire.