Wildfire Arsonists Prove Difficult to Catch

ORLANDO | It's hard to catch a wildfire arsonist — at least until he slips up.

Paul Steensland, the top fire investigator for the U.S. Forest Service until he retired in 2005, found in his extensive surveys of other investigators across the nation that firebugs set an average of 35 brush and forest fires before getting arrested. The typical woodlands arsonist takes advantage of knowing the local roads and how local law enforcement works.

'Most wildfire arsonists are serial arsonists,' Steensland said. 'They will continue to set fires until they are caught. I think we catch the vast majority of them.'

But that can take time, which is cold comfort to communities terrorized by fires.

A task force of federal, state and local investigators is struggling with these difficulties as they try to discover who set the wildfires that burned more than 12,000 acres this week in Palm Bay, Malabar and other parts of Brevard County.

Two people have been accused of setting small fires in Palm Bay and Cocoa, but no one has been arrested in the larger fires that destroyed 40 homes and damaged dozens of others. Those blazes continued to burn Friday, but authorities said they were at least 70 percent contained.

During the state's past fiscal year, authorities charged 13 adults and 11 juveniles with wildfire arsons, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture. During the same period, state forest rangers fought 689 arson wildfires.

With the help of witnesses, a few firebugs are handcuffed within hours of setting blazes. A few others never come close to an arrest and eventually stop.

The truth is, Steensland said, even the most intense investigation of a fire scene usually doesn't lead directly to an arrest. At best, evidence will point to a suspect whom investigators might hope to catch red-handed after days or months of surveillance.

That's if there is evidence to uncover.

From years of experience, investigators can read a wildfire like a map. The key is determining where the fire started.

One clue comes from pine needles. As a blaze races through, wind fans the needles to point in the direction the fire is moving. Then, intense heat locks them in that position.

Investigators call it 'needle freeze.'

Another clue comes from grasses. Flames that run with the wind are intensely hot and incinerate grasses into fine ash.

But flames that slowly back into the wind are low and not as hot. Partly burned grasses fall over, pointing to where the fire started.

Eventually, investigators get on their hands and knees, wielding magnifying glasses, searching for telltale remains.

Kevin Hays, an east Central Florida director for the International Association of Arson Investigators, said authorities must consider several factors. They include the type of accelerant used to trigger the blaze, the wind speed and direction, topography, height of trees, weather and humidity, and what witnesses and firefighters observed.

Even burned wire fences can yield important clues, said Hays, a former Tallahassee Fire Department investigator.

'The soot is on the side where fire is spreading from,' said Hays, also an investigative consultant with Rimkus Consulting Group in Maitland, whose company was hired by insurance companies to review several homes destroyed this week in Brevard County.

'If you have multiple points of origin, that's a pretty good clue it's not an accidental fire, unless you've had multiple lightning strikes,' he said.

'Arsons are one of the toughest cases to go to court with,' said Maj. Ron McCardle in the state's Bureau of Fire and Arson Investigations. 'A lot of the time, there's no witnesses or it's totally circumstantial.'