Burned

Burned

Adult nonfiction
It was the script for every parent's worst nightmare come to
life. Jo Ann Parks was wakened in the middle of the night by the
screams of her three little children. When smoke and heat didn't let
her get to them, she ran to a neighbor's home seeking help. Although
she was assured that her children would be ok, she was later to learn
that all three perished.
Fate had more ugly in store for Parks. In the aftermath of the
blaze fire inspectors saw what they considered irrefutable signs of
arson. Her husband had been away working a night shift. So she was
the suspect, portrayed as a monster, convicted of murder, and
sentenced to life without possibility of parole.
I have three grown children. When they were little my husband,
who worked irregular hours, and I raised them in a trailor with
kitchen and living room between the master and other bedrooms.
Greystone residents were deemed trailor park trash, maybe easy to deem
capable of a crime more "decent" people wouldn't contemplate. I read
the first part of Edward Humes' Burned with my heart in my throat.
When Parks had been in prison for decades her case was taken up
by attorney Raquel Cohen of the California Innocence Project. The
Project is part of a network of organizations dedicated to freeing
people who were wrongly convicted of crimes. Twice before reviews had
gone nowhere, but Cohen believed she had what it would take to
challenge and overturn the conviction. The narrative Humes spins out
is truly spellbinding.
This finely crafted book, however, is not just a read and set
aside. Although knowledge of how fires start and spread is changing
quickly, there is hefty resistance to doing away with the old ways of
arson judgement. Not only could "experts" be undermined, but hordes
of the wrongly convicted could have to be set loose. Actually a lot
of the methods relied on by district attorneys and featured in popular
crime shows, including fingerprinting, are based more on tradition
than scientific inquiry with peer review and established error rates.
That should disturb us all.
On a personal note, Burned has spurred me to undertake a project I'm
pretty sure Humes would like all readers to do. In chapter two he
describes how little time it takes for a small blaze to explode into a
tragedy. I'm going through my house room by room looking for
potential fire hazards. How about you? Do you have fire detectors
with working batteries? Do you regularly clean out dryer lint? Are
there too many appliances plugged in at any one place? Do you leave
the kitchen while frying?
The conflagration you prevent, won't take your home, your
belongings, or your life.
Great big shout outs go out to Humes for this fine volume and the
firefighters like my son who never know what a call will confront them
with.
jules hathaway





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