By Staff
With all the media coverage of the wild fires in Georgia, Florida and California forest fires have displaced the day's weather for being the main topic of discussion. It may seem inconceivable but one of the major causes of wildfires is arson.
Nearly every state ranks arson among the top two or three causes of wildfires. I'm a Michigan Wildland Firefighter and just the other day several of us were sitting on call at the Allegan Fire Office. We perked up when we heard over the radio that Leo from our brother office in Muskegon was responding to a wildfire. Leo's crew hadn't been on the fire fifteen minutes when dispatch reported another fire flaring up barely a quarter mile from the first one. We rolled knowing eyes toward one another. "Oh, oh," said Mike, the Allegan Fire Officer, "Leo's got a bug working." Bug is firefighter slang for an arsonist. Suspicions were confirmed when Leo reported the local fire department had doused two other small fires in the same area earlier in the morning.
The number of intentionally set fires varies from region to region but in some locals it's second only to people burning yard debris. Statistics are hard to come by because arson is difficult to prove and few cases are solved but the U.S. Forest Service attributes a quarter to a third of the 116,000 wildfires that occur on average nationwide each year to arson. Numbers from the Western Fire Ecology Center support the Forest Service estimates, stating over 25,000 fires each year are known arson and at least another 25,000 of suspicious origin. In some areas arson is much more prevalent than that. Kentucky claims 55-60 percent of their wildfires are arson caused and I've heard numbers as high as 80 percent from some areas.
Arson fires aren't always little harmless wienie roasters either. Last year in California an arsonist started the infamous Esperanza fire that burned thousands of acres, destroyed a number of homes and killed five firemen. The same perpetrator is suspected of setting as many as 10 other wildfires prior to the Esperanza fire. Similar scenarios are repeated all across the country. Closer to home, in 1988 an arsonist lit three separate fires all at once on the Allegan State Game Area. Called the Mother's Day Fires (they were set on Mother's Day), when the smoke finally cleared over two thousand acres lay scorched. The arsonist was never caught. Here in Michigan somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 wildfires occur every year. Most are from people burning yard debris but approximately a third of them are lumped together under miscellaneous causes, of which many of those are suspected arson.
A difficult question is what motivates so many people to set wildfires? One major force seems to be anger or revenge. A landowner kicks a trespasser off his property and the offender returns to set a fire. Someone is mad at the DNR for raising hunting license fees and starts fires on State Land. A disgruntled Forest Service employee sets fires in National Forests to get back at her employer.
Money is another big motivator. Wildfire is big business. Nationwide it's not unusual for a billion dollars a year to be spent fighting wildfires, most of it going to private contractors for the set up and operation of fire camps, heavy equipment and airplane operations. Somewhere along the line someone is bound to ensure a lucrative contract with a match. At a simpler but similar level, though it's rare, occasionally a firefighter who gets paid only when he's fighting fire turns to arson to create more work.
From another financial front, often in areas where logging is banned loggers are allowed in after a fire to salvage the scorched timber. Regardless of the connection, when someone's livelihood depends on fire the motive is there to ensure there are plenty of flames.
The law takes wildfire arson seriously. Here in Michigan it's a felony carrying a $10,000 fine and 10 years in jail. Should someone be injured or die as a result charges could elevate as far as murder. Carpe diem.