Identifying evidence in a home destroyed by fire may seem like a daunting task to the untrained eye.

But there is a select group of individuals in the county trained to inspect even the most damaging blazes.

“You just have to know what to look for,” said Larry Christy, fire marshal for Butler Township.

Christy began inspecting fires for the city in the 1990s and has been with the township for the past seven years.

His role with the township is to assist each of its three fire departments whenever there is a fire call.

“I'm dispatched to all working fires to determine the cause and origin,” he said.

Figuring out what caused a fire can be relatively simple or it could require an extensive investigation.

“After the incident happens, and we get the fire out, we will try to reconstruct what happened,” said Fire Chief Nick Ban of the Butler city fire department.

Ban, who took over as chief when Christy left the city, said he has the responsibilities of both a fire chief and a fire marshal.

The two men are the only municipal fire marshals in the county.

A state police fire marshal conducts investigations for fires outside Butler and Butler Township.

Ban said determining the cause of a fire starts with knowing what to look for.

“Sometimes its obvious,” Ban said. “You talk with someone and they say they were playing with matches — right there is probably your cause.”

But sometimes fires — especially the larger blazes — require an investigation to determine what happened.

That's when years of training and experience come into play.

“Things burn in different ways,” Ban said, adding electrical fires, for example, leave behind distinct burns on wires, while other fires often are traced to cooking appliances or heating systems.

“Cooking fires are the largest cause of fires in the country,” Ban said.

Both Christy and Ban said they seek assistance from the state police fire marshal when it comes to suspicious or deadly fires.

“Anytime there is a death involved, I contact the state police fire marshal,” Ban said.

Ban said the state police fire marshal has a far more advanced lab to do chemical analysis of fire scenes.

“What they do is really fascinating stuff,” he said. “They can do advanced chemical testing that is beyond what the city is capable of doing.”

Both men said the majority of fires in their jurisdictions are not suspicious.

“I believe I've had seven suspicious fires in the time I've been here,” Christy said. “And we've cleared and prosecuted five of the seven with convictions.”

Ban said cases of arson are also rare in the city, although they do exist.

“Few have been intentionally set,” Ban said. “Of those, we've been fortunate to catch most of them.”

Ban added city police also are involved in any crime investigation.

Ban said there are signs to indicate arson.

“You may find that someone entered and stole water pipes from the home,” he said. “And in the process they break a gas line.”

Ban said fire marshals also look for things like broken windows to indicate a crime.

“After we've secured the scene, we go back and look areas over,” Ban said. “We start from the outside and work our way in.”

Trained scent dogs from Allegheny County are used to sniff out whether an accelerant was used to start a blaze.

“When they find something, they're usually right on the money,” Ban said.

Police aren't the only ones fire marshals work with in examining a fire.

Insurance companies also have a strong interest in the cause of a blaze.

“Insurance companies don't just pay out claims,” Ban said. “They want to make sure claims are based on an actual loss, not a created loss.”

Ban said insurance companies also will hire private investigators to inspect fires, in addition to relying on state and local fire marshals.

While fire marshals work to investigate homes that caught fire, they also work to prevent them.

“Fire prevention is a big part of what we do,” Ban said of the department, adding he lectures frequently at places such as elementary schools and personal care homes.

Christy said much of his time as fire marshal is devoted to safety inspections as well.

Both men work closely with their municipalities' respective building code officials to inspect properties.

Ban said he hopes to educate property owners in violation rather than citing them.

“My first approach is to always speak with the property owner,” he said. “In my seven years as chief, I've only cited five people.”

Fire marshals depend on the international fire code as their source of information. The code is outlined in a collection of more than a dozen books, each containing between 700 and 1,200 pages.

“It's updated annually,” Ban said.

Fire marshals look for safety regulations in buildings, including exit signs, sprinkler systems and carbon monoxide detectors.

Ban said it is important also to simply know what buildings are and where they are located.

“Is a business selling propane cylinders or are they selling candy bars,” he said. “If you get a call at 3 a.m., it's good to know that before hand.”

And the calls come at all hours of the day and night.

“It's a 24-hour per day job,” Christy said.

While fire marshals look to educate the public, they also must educate themselves.

Ban said he has attended countless training seminars on a variety of safety aspects.

“There's training for every discipline imaginable,” he said, mentioning seminars on high angle rescue, vehicle extraction, hazardous materials and even roof truss systems. “You pretty much have to have background in everything.”