Firefighter. Volunteers. Heroics and money. Firefighter arson often for the thrill.
Experts say most such blazes are small but can have a big impact
BY BILL GEROUX
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Jan 28, 2006
NORFOLK - On the surface, the arrest of a Norfolk firefighter Tuesday in a series of fires in Maryland is a striking paradox, a man-bites-dog story. But experts say it may just be the latest example of a little-known phenomenon called "firefighter arson."
The vast majority of the nation's roughly 1 mil- lion firefighters would never think of starting fire, but a tiny percentage across the U.S. wage secret campaigns of arson in the communities they have sworn to protect, said Timothy G. Huff, a former FBI analyst who began tracking such cases for the bureau in the 1990s.
Most of those firefighter-arsonists are young volunteers, driven by a thirst for excitement, a need for public adulation, or the promise of money they receive only when the fire trucks roll, Huff said in an interview yesterday.
Their targets tend to be stands of tall grass and unoccupied vehicles and buildings, close enough to their fire stations that they can respond to the blazes, said Ken Cade, a South Carolina forester who has interviewed many of them. Most of them don't want to hurt anyone, Cade said, but sometimes their needs - and their fires - escalate beyond their control.
"We've seen cases where a firefighter sets a house on fire, drives around the block a few times until he can see smoke, calls in the fire, and then rushes in to save the little old lady he saw through the window."
There are no reliable statistics of firefighter arsons nationwide. Arson is difficult to detect and even harder to solve, and even when a case is solved, the suspect's profession does not figure into the statistics, said Allen Sapp, emeritus professor of criminology at Central Missouri State University. But the anecdotal evidence suggests firefighter arson is more common than the public realizes.
In the early 1990s, a series of arrests in South Carolina prompted Cade to poll fire chiefs across the state. He discovered that 40 firefighters per year were being arrested statewide for setting fires in woods, trash bins and vacant buildings - mainly for the experience of putting them out.
Around the same time, Huff, who traveled around the country giving talks, began asking fire officials in his audiences about any firefighter-arson cases in their departments. He quickly learned of 25 cases involving a total of 75 firefighters and 182 fires.
Virginia, like most states, does not keep records of firefighter arsons. But the files of The Times-Dispatch chronicle 15 such cases in the past 19 years, spanning the state. Most of those cases involved young volunteer firefighters setting fire to unoccupied buildings. The fires caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, and one death.
The history of firefighter arson in the U.S. has a few notorious chapters, including a huge Arizona forest fire set by an unemployed wildlands firefighter, and a deadly store arson by a California arson investigator that killed four people, including a 2-year-old child. The latter became the subject of a book and a made-for-TV movie. In addition, a fictional firefighter arsonist was the villain in the popular motion picture "Backdraft."
For the most part, however, firefighters set small-scale "nuisance" fires. But that does not mean firefighter arson is a trivial problem for the fire service, Huff and other experts wrote in a 2003 report to the U.S. Fire Administration. "Its importance is measured not by a large number of incidents but by the serious impact of the very few which do occur."
Part of that impact is a shared sense of betrayal among fellow firefighters and among the people the department serves, the report said. The authors recommended that fire departments carefully screen applicants for prior trouble with the law and promptly investigate any suspicious activity in the ranks.
William C. Smith, executive director of the Virginia Fire Chiefs Association, said fire professionals in the state recognize the possibility of arsonists in their midst and watch for telltale patterns. He said some of Virginia's larger fire departments require background checks and psychological tests to examine applicants' fitness for the job.
But such measures are too costly and burdensome for many volunteer departments, which makes up roughly 60 percent of Virginia's firefighting force, Smith said. Many of those fire companies struggle to find people willing to serve.
Best to stop financial support.
It would diminish the fires.
Financial support
A VFD may be financially supported by taxes raised in a city, town, county, fire district, or other governmental entity, as well as corporate and other private donations, federal grants, and other assistance from auxiliary members, or firefighters' associations.
With these funds the VFD acquires and operates the firefighting apparatus, equips and trains the firefighters, maintains the firehouse, and possibly also covers insurance, worker's compensation, and other post-injury or retirement benefits. A VFD (or its governing entity) may also contract with other nearby departments to cover each other in a mutual aid (or automatic aid) pact as a means for assisting each other with equipment and manpower, when necessary. |
