Hanna Lindqvist-Vasilakou, PE, CFEI

§1Background

Hanna Lindqvist-Vasilakou is a graduate of the University at Buffalo’s electrical engineering program (BSEE 2008) and Carnegie Mellon’s power-systems master’s program (MS 2014). Her undergraduate years overlapped with Margaret Trzaska’s last graduate year at CMU; they met at a 2007 IEEE PES Buffalo Section meeting where Margaret was presenting preliminary dissertation work. The connection sat dormant for eleven years until Hanna’s late-2018 outreach to Margaret about a possible move from the Buffalo-area utility investigator role she then held.

The intervening years were spent at a Buffalo-area fire-investigation consultancy and then, for six years, at the New York State Office of Fire Prevention and Control as the OFPC’s electrical specialist on the State Fire Investigation Unit. The state role gave her the breadth of electrical-fire scene experience the firm had not previously had — Margaret had run her R-01 work for ten years on the strength of her power-systems training and a careful reading of NFPA 921, but Hanna brought the NAFI CFEI certification (#8447, awarded 2016 and current) and the hundreds of scene visits the State Fire role required. She joined Presque Isle PFE in July 2019; her first sealed report for the firm closed on a residential fire in Conneautville, PA, on 14 October 2019.

Hanna’s name combines her Finnish maternal grandparents (from Tampere, immigrated to Jamestown, NY in 1949) and her Greek paternal family (from Patras, immigrated to Buffalo in 1962); the hyphen is permanent. She and her wife Sarah, a librarian at the Erie County Public Library, live in the Frontier neighborhood of Erie’s east side with two children and a senior cat named Carbonel.

§2Practice focus

Within the firm, Lindqvist-Vasilakou is the lead engineer on R-01 (electrical fire origin and cause) and R-07 (lightning and surge investigations). She is on the second-position rotation for R-08 (subrogation support) and is the firm’s primary point of contact for the carriers’ subrogation desks because of her NAFI CFEI credential and her familiarity with the language carriers use.

Her standing hypothesis grid for R-01 work (documented at R-01 §4) is now the firm’s working framework for all fire-origin matters, including the ones Trzaska or Adekunle lead. Hanna wrote it during her first year with the firm, adapting the State Fire Investigation Unit’s internal protocol to the more limited evidentiary basis of post-suppression-release scene work; the grid has been used on 94 sealed R-01 reports.

She is also the firm’s primary contact with the regional fire-investigation community — the IAAI’s Western Pennsylvania chapter, the NAFI’s NY/PA region, and the ATF Fire Research Laboratory’s outreach program. The firm’s formal referral relationships with two regional NAFE-credentialed firms (named on the About page) were established by Lindqvist-Vasilakou shortly after her arrival in 2019.

§3Testimony record

Qualified as an expert in fire-origin investigation, electrical fire-cause analysis, and lightning/surge investigation in the following jurisdictions:

• WDPa — Erie Division. 6 admissions, 2020 – 2026.
• NDOH — Cleveland and Akron divisions. 4 admissions, 2021 – 2025.
• United States District Court for the Western District of New York — WDNY. 3 admissions, 2020 – 2024.
• Erie County CCP, Pennsylvania. 7 admissions, 2019 – 2026.
• Buffalo City Court, New York. 2 admissions, 2020 – 2023.

22 depositions; 6 bench trials. Two qualifications under FRE 702 challenged and sustained on cross-examination; no qualifications denied.

§4Signature investigations

• CF-2025-071 · Mill Creek tube mill secondary fire. Featured this issue, jointly with Adekunle on R-06. Dossier.
• CF-2025-101 · Cell tower SPD failure following lightning. WDPa subrogation matter where the carrier pursued the SPD manufacturer for under-rated UL 1449 selection on a 2018 installation; sealed and settled.
• CF-2024-160 · Stable fire on a Crawford County dairy farm. Single-phase service drop terminated at a 1962 weatherhead; fire originated in the milking parlor wiring after a 47-year service life. Pre-cited by counsel for negligent maintenance against the prior owner’s insurance carrier.
• CF-2023-156 · Residential solar-PV inverter fire after surge event. R-07 + R-01 cross-protocol that established the firm’s working pattern for distributed-generation surge investigations.
• CF-2021-074 · Multi-family apartment fire in Ashtabula traced to a counterfeit GFCI breaker. Matter became part of CPSC’s 2022 enforcement action against the importer.

§5References