When I joined the fire company in 1987, the station lights were kept dark when no one was there — inside and out. On the occasions I made it to the station first, usually limited to ambulance runs, I’d have to go through the darkened parking lot to unlock the door.
Then one day the switches for the outside lights, which already had photocells to automatically turn off in daylight, were in the on position and taped over to keep them that way with a note to not shut them off. Not much else was told to the general membership other then it had been decided we should leave them on. For reasons I won’t discuss publicly, I became privy to the reason — an officer in a department the next town over, suspected in a string of arsons including burning down a station of his former department, had made threats against my company as one of our members was a State Trooper involved with the investigation.
I can remember that arsonist’s department had been busy the summer before with an unusually high number of brush fires, and his voice was frequently heard on the radio reporting them, or arriving quickly to them, and working at them. His behavior escalated until his final weekend of freedom he lit a string of three arson fires, abandoned buildings in three different towns, and got sloppy and was witnessed. Finally the Fire Marshals & State Police had a strong enough case to ensure once the handcuffs went on he would not again leave custody until his prison sentence was completed. That final weekend was bitterly cold, and my company was tasked to lay a 3,000′ 5″ hose line to a water source for one of the fires. A lot of work in nice weather, simply painful in single digits.
The progression from outside fires, to single structures, and increasing frequency is not unusual. A list of additional reading is at the end of this post.
That, unfortunately, has not been my only peripheral involvement with firefighter arsonists.
There was at least one department in my area that, listening on the radio, always had a very high number of brush fires and in particular very frequently called in by their officers. It really started to gain my attention when I heard several times in one year one officer reporting by radio a brush fire behind another officer’s residence. That was a suspicious pattern to say the least.
Another arsonist operating near my town set a series of abandoned buildings on fire. In my area at the time it was typical for the three closest fire stations to be dispatched to reported structure fires. Over the course of several months and about 10 fires, each was lit in an area that two stations were in common on the first alarm assignment for each location — a pattern that would be incredible to be a coincidence. History repeating, who I can only assume to be a firefighter-arsonist caused my company to be called to one of the fires to lay a 3,000′ 5″ line to secure a water supply. At least it was a nice night and not hot or cold or rainy.
A few weeks later I’m coming through an intersection in the town next to mine when I see smoke. For a split second I thought it was someone burning, illegally, a brush pile then as the volume of smoke rapidly increased I realized it was structure fire. Before I could grab my cell phone the dispatcher came over the scanner speaker notifying the appropriate companies, so I parked my car in a driveway across the street and grabbed my camera to get photos of the building and crowd to give to the State Fire Marshals.
February, 2002 Dayville Arson
As far as I know this arsonist was never caught, but the string of fires seemed to have ended after a homeowner saw him in the act of attempting to light her barn on fire by the entrance to the community college in Killingly, and called 911. In a bit of good timing, a State Trooper happened to be going by the residence as the radio call went out and pulled into the driveway spooking the culprit and initiating an extended foot pursuit through woods and swamp before the suspect finally out ran him.
Of course, not all arsonists are firefighters — and being a firefighter, I’m a bit more sensitive and apt to remember the minority of fires that are lit by so-called firefighters. One involving the woods but not a firefighter occurred when I was young, probably 17 or maybe 18. We had a couple fires that were called in shortly after elementary and junior high school got out and well off the road. One of these I was quick to arrive and headed down the woods road towards the smoke when I encountered a couple youths on bicycles leaving the area, and to this day I can’t remember what one of them said but I vividly remember the image. I know he said something about firefighters that was inappropriate because I remember being shocked. To my great disappointment and second guessing later, I just gave him a strange look and continued driving to the fire — oh to be able to go back in time and have stopped and held the brat for questioning by the fire marshal & police. Our minor series of a few small woods fires ended that day however.
Today I came across the story of John David Berken of Minnesota who is accused of lighting a 1,500 acre grass fire in a wildlife refuge in Minnesota, and if you read the references at the end you’ll realize how much he’s a poster child for “if your gut says something’s wrong, it’s probably right.”
When Berken applied to be a volunteer firefighter in 2005, he was rejected after
a standard background check revealed convictions, city officials said in a
statement Wednesday. Upon appeal, then-Mayor Terry Smith directed the city to
hire Berken. He was put on extended probation, which ended last year.
...Berken's legal troubles date back to 1991, when he was convicted of
threatening to blow up a local airport.
...State court records indicate
Berken also has several check-forgery and theft convictions and served about 20
months in prison in the mid-1990s
...by 2008, Berken was part owner and
president of Forest Lake Ford. But he became embroiled in a lawsuit after he was
accused of failing to repay a credit card company almost $4 million in cash
advances.
From the Twin Cities.com (archive)
Some resources to read on this issue are this Powerpoint presentation from the 2006 IAAI Conference (archive), the USFA TR-141 Report (archive), and this National Volunteer Fire Council report which references Timothy Hutt’s well respected research into this matter (if anyone knows where to download Huff’s full report, please let me know!)
