In a tragic house fire that took three lives, the plaintiff claimed the blaze started at an interior electrical outlet. The defense argued it began on the exterior porch.
We produced two 3D animations and an interactive exhibit that compared the competing theories and spotlighted a key timeline issue. Under the plaintiff's interior scenario, the alarm should have gone off much earlier, well before the house was engulfed. Yet survivors were only woken by the alarm once the interior was already heavily involved.
A 3D animation that directly showed the plaintiff's theory on how the fire started and spread to compare to the defense's version.
A 3D animation that contradicts the plaintiff's theory and shows why they are wrong and the defense is correct
A custom interactive 3D floor plan with the roof removed, complete with markup tools, linked post-fire photos, and smoke alarm indicators.
The plaintiff pointed to a faulty living room outlet as the cause. The defense relied on evidence showing the fire started outside on the porch and moved inward and upward.
We produced two 3D animations and an interactive exhibit that compared the competing theories and spotlighted a key timeline issue. Under the plaintiff's interior scenario, the alarm should have gone off much earlier, well before the house was engulfed. Yet survivors were only woken by the alarm once the interior was already heavily involved.A central question involved the smoke alarm. Survivors said it woke them, but by that point the house was already heavily engulfed, and three people did not make it out. The defense needed to demonstrate that an interior start at the outlet would have triggered the alarm much sooner, before the interior became fully involved. This mismatch with the facts supported their porch origin explanation.
This animation showed the fire igniting at the living room outlet and spreading quickly inside. The alarm activates early in the sequence, well before the house is engulfed, which would have given occupants a meaningful chance to escape.
This version started the fire on the exterior porch. It showed the flames climbing walls and furniture, moving into the ceiling and attic, and advancing across the roof. The interior alarm only sounds later, after major involvement, when the house was already heavily engulfed. This matched what the survivors experienced and explained the lack of escape time.
We built a navigable 3D model of the house with the roof removed. This let everyone explore the layout and directly supported the origin argument. Experts could:
We created both animations in the same 3D space using matching viewpoints and timing. This made it easy to compare them directly, either side by side or one after the other.
In the plaintiff's scenario, the alarm sounds early, before the house is engulfed. In the defense scenario, it sounds much later, after the fire had spread extensively. The difference was obvious and helped show why the porch origin theory fit the evidence and the survivors' accounts far better.
These visuals gave the defense team practical tools to:
When fire origin and alarm timing are in dispute, you need more than words and still photos. Good forensic animations and interactive 3D models let legal teams show competing theories clearly so everyone can see the important differences.
This project is a good example of how we create accurate, effective visuals that support defense work in challenging fire cases.