Shockingly enough the firefighting industry is now faced with the fact that firefighters are setting fires. A recent investigation reveled that two volunteers with the Pike Road Fire Department were to blame for15 arson cases in the pastoral town of Pike Road, Alabama.
Lou Hyman, the assistant director of the Alabama Forestry Commission, said that firefighters committing such crimes is not common, but it does happen, stating that “the adrenaline rush of fighting a fire is somewhat addicting…if they don’t have one, they start one.”.
Similarly, in the early 1990’s, the South Carolina Forestry Commission was faced with dozens of fires set by firefighters. Ken Cabe, the commission’s information officer, compiled statistics and found that the number of firefighters arrested for arson jumped from 33 in 1993 to 47 in 1994. “Most of these people were not bad people ,” he said. “They were not out to hurt people.”
In addition, the National Volunteer Fire Council established a subcommittee to conduct a national survey on this issue in 1993 and concluded that better background screening of applicants could prevent firefighter arson, especially among volunteers. Cabe said South Carolina drastically reduced the number of firefighter arrests for arson by taking such measures. The state went from averaging 30 per year to only three.
Fire departments need to take precautionary measures, such as performing background checks, to ensure the safety of the city in which they are trying to protect.
