The cause-effect relation between fire safety requirements violations and consequences of a fire resulting from an arson

Purpose. The article is devoted to the urgent problem of fire investigation, namely, finding the nature of cause-effect relation between causing harm to people’s life and health in a fire and the condition of fire safety system of the facility under protection in case of artificial fire initiation. Methods. The scientific basis for the research was provided by system analysis, methods of information synthesis, methods of expert analysis and the method of cause-effect analysis. Findings. Based on the conducted study, it was determined that there may be no direct cause-effect relation between causing harm to people’s life and health in a fire and the condition of fire safety system of the facility if the fire was artificially initiated. To confirm this statement, the expert can identify and indicate lack of dependencies between the violation properties of fire safety requirement and the consequences nature. An artificial fire initiation (arson) creates a break in the chain of cause-effect relations between fire safety requirements violations and fire consequences onset, that disrupts spatial and temporal continuity in the chain of causal events in a fire. Research application field. The results obtained can be applied in the qualification of fire safety requirements violations, as well as in the qualification of crimes related to fires. Conclusions. It has been proved that the current regulatory legal acts and regulatory documents on fire safety assume an accidental fire occurrence and do not provide special measures and conditions in case of fire as a result of arson, that should be taken into account at investigating fires. The break in the chain of cause-effect relations between fire safety requirements violations and fire consequences onset due to deliberate actions on setting a fire excludes a direct cause-effect relation between violated fire safety requirements and resulted negative fire consequences. This must be taken into account when legally qualifying what happened.