Australia counts the cost of bush arson

Jan 26, 2006, 14:03 GMT

Sydney - Well over half of Australia's forest fires are deliberately lit. Most culprits get away with it because arson takes just a few seconds, requires no more than a cigarette lighter and is damnably difficult to prove in court.

Firebugs cost the nation 77 million Australian dollars (57 million U.S. dollars) a year, an Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) survey found. Incalculable is the misery of gutted homes, dead farm animals and blackened national parks.

'The deliberate lighting of bushfires is essentially an Australian phenomenon,' Justice Minister Chris Ellison admitted. 'Australians are all too aware of the devastation bushfires can cause and that knowledge is only made worse by the fact that so many are deliberately lit.'

It's an abiding puzzle why so many are drawn to kindling flames that since 1967 have killed over 230 people and injured 5,000 more.

'They are extremely dangerous because they are unpredictable and because their fires have no boundaries,' psychologist Rebekah Doley said. 'They also tend to be serial offenders and, in my experience, will not stop until caught.'

Doley, a lecturer at Charles Sturt University, who has interviewed dozens of convicted arsonists, says there are multiple motivations with the classic arsonist a bit dim-witted, unemployed or in a low- paying job, and craving a bit of attention.

In the 2002 bushfire season, more than 3 million hectares of forest was lost. In Canberra, eight people died and 500 houses were razed.

At the end of that bad season, a report recommended that convicted arsonists be monitored during the annual bushfire season to deter them from re-offending. It's a proposal that is still on the table.

There has also been a greater effort to prosecute firebugs. In New South Wales alone, there are 63 full-time fire investigators who are getting more and more adept at pinpointing the source of fires and providing the forensic evidence for prosecutions.

In 2004, after investigations into 130 deliberately lit fires, 21 people were hauled into courts to answer arson charges.

Assistant Police Commissioner John Laycock said at the time: 'We find they fall into three categories: childish pranks, kids lighting fires in the parks; then the people with mental problems, there are generally a few of them around; and you get the serial arsonists, the Grade A people, who get that buzz out of lighting a fire.'

A particularly worrying element is the rogue firefighter the Rural Fire Service (RFS) volunteer who gets a kick not just from extinguishing fires but from lighting them as well. Nine RFS volunteers have been charged with arson in the last five years.

Phil Koperberg, the RFS head, says inside jobs are to be expected. 'We have 70,000 people in our organisation and among that 70,000 is a representative sample of people who are inclined to do this sort of thing,' Koperberg said.