EHRENBERG, Ariz — Four firefighters and two others have been arrested on suspicion of starting between 15 and 20 fires in western Arizona to make money. La Paz County sheriff's Lt. Glenn Gilbert says the fires were set between last January and last week. They occurred in abandoned trailer homes, open land and in expensive haystacks owned by farmers. No one was hurt in the fires but the most costly destroyed a $200,000 haystack. The investigation began months ago when a sheriff's officer thought one fire was suspicious and only recently pointed to the firefighters and two acquaintances. Gilbert says the firefighters admitted to starting the blazes to make money. They get $10 an hour per fire. Haystack fires can last days. "A $200,000 haystack"?
Nothing new here. The more action, the more money , so it's very tempting, more than ever those days.
12-15 years ago some high school boys were arrested after starting fires and having a friend start fires so that they could get out of school to go fight the fires. The school stopped allowing any volunteer FF to leave school after that. You can't put them out, not without a LOT of work dispersing the the hay.
Even medium quality alfalfa hay is going for between $100-$250 (USD) per ton, i.e. 2000 lbs, depending on locale where it is being sold. So that could be a small stack only having 800 tons in it. Each normal sized (small square) bale generally weights about 80 to 100 lbs, so a person can figure it out. Each ton would be between 20 and 25 bales. Now if it was Timothy hay, which isn’t unlikely since that is a dry-land grass type hay, that stuff is even more expensive. It starts at $200 a ton and goes as high as $280 in Nevada. And that price is IN PLACE so that means you (the buyer) have to pay that tariff to start with, and come and get it yourself. Now that can become a very expensive proposition. If they were local firefighters as I suspect from the article, they probably only did get the stated $10 per hour. In the northwest as well as here in Montana the Native American wildfire fighters get first crack at the jobs, and they are good at it. That said I believe they make between $25 and $40 (USD) per hour, depending on the terrain, length of time on the line, and other factors. Now as private contractors they don’t get overtime pay, nor hazardous duty pay like their Forest Service or professional public funded brethren.
Currently here in Houston-there is a serial-arsonist going around starting fires in vacant apartments at some apt/complex here in town. Just recently-this SoB started a fire in an occupied apt and the people thankfully, all got out safely. The sorry SoB who is getting it's jollies playing with fire-apparently is escalating it's agenda and might wind up killing more than one somebody. I hope this thing is cought by someone while attempting to start another fire-and the SoB gets it's dues paid in full-with Lead.
Hear hear. In the 1970's, when I was a child firefighter, I had problems with school staff and leaving to fight fires. After one lengthy overnight fire (house, haystack, and barn), I was at the fire station with another firefighter cleaning up when a call came in-it was from my school. We rolled and it turned out to be a trash can, the smoke from which entered the school, prompting an evacuation. While putting out the fire and checking the building, my Principal approached me and asked if I was going to stay on school grounds once the fire was out. I told him I had been out all night and that I needed a shower and nap. He wasn't happy about that. BTW, we got 4.00 a call. If you were out 15 minutes or three days, all you got was 4.00
That reminds me of when I was in High School. People, probably students would call in bomb threats and we would get out of school for a few hours. Also I have relatives in the Ohio valley who tell of farmers who raise tobacco and have a bad crop, harvest it and insure it, then burn the barn full of tobacco. They get paid everytime, even though everyone knows what is going on.
When I became one of three assistant chiefs, I was in charge of filing and filling out reports. We rolled on one fire one day. A guy had converted his garage to a den. He still stored certain items in his den, which was where his hot water heater was. He had been mowing his lawn and he stored his gas can next to the natural gas fired weater heater. The can went and we were able to contain damage to his den and family room. When I filled out the report I had a series of boxes I could check for cause of fire-the causes ranging from accidental, to negligence to arson. I checked off negligence, which set off the senior assistant chief. He told me that the insurance company wouldn't pay off for negligence. I told him storing a gas can next to open flame is stupid, reckless, and negligent. He snatched the report out of my hands and told me to leave-or else. I sometimes wonder about the insurance companies and their level of credibility needed to pay off on certain things.
They aren't the first. There is this piece of work: Jonathan Paul said some tactics were acceptable, as long as no one got hurt - February 26, 2006
Storing that gas can next to anything hot was flat out stupid. A young couple died earlier this year in Corpus Christi. What they did was as stupid as what that guy did w/ his gas can. Anyway, what happened was the Apt they lived in-it's electricity was turned off from the bill not being paid---soooooooooooo, they borrowed a generator--had it siting inside the Apt--all closed up of course--with the generator running-to make the window AC work. Well, they were found dead sometime the next day--by one of their Parents. Now the parents re trying to sue the electric company for negligence and something else-though it was no fault of the electric company. I had wished that I would have been picked to serve on the Jury who would be handling that case. I would have ruled in favor of the electric company. Sad shame that a yound couple died because of a nose-pinching mistake. :-(
I would not classify them as firefighters, just idiots. This happens and has always happened from time to time, especially in rural areas. Lack of fires or receiving pay for calls to service. Of course it's funny that some of those people think that a mobile home, or haystack fires would be fun. In doing that kind of crap they make all firefighters look bad and that always get me going.
That's what I was thinking, how big is that? Big bale hay is around sixty quid a ton, so that's over 33,000 tons...
We showed up to a house fire and apparently got there "too soon", as you will soon see. We got in there, put the fire out and began to notice things like the TV, stereo and family pictures were missing from the house. The Chief casually asked the owner if they had an insurance policy, so we could get reimbursed since insurance companies usually pay the primary department $500 for fighting the fire. Anyway, the owner said that yes, he had it in the glove box of his car. As Homer Simpson would say, "d'oh!" The Chief then contacted the Fire Marshal, suspecting arson and a possible insurance fraud attempt. The investigator got there and found an accelerant in the house. Since it was his own house, no crime was committed unless the owner were to file a loss claim and he wasn't about to do that with the damning evidence found by the fire investigator, so he was left with a badly fire & smoke damaged house. Also, if you are going to burn down a house, don't pour gasoline throughout the structure, then stand in the door and strike a match. One dept nearby responded to a well involved house fire where that very thing happened. The arsonist was found smoldering about 100 ft from the house. The fireball from the igniting fumes enveloped him and he managed to make it that far from the house before he burned to death. Imagine one of those TV stunts where the stuntman is wholly on fire and flailing his arms around, except it is real.
I suspect it in one of the biggest fires in the town's history. Anthony and Frank were firefighters, and longtime family friends. Their family owned a HUGE two and a half story, city block long house. Both were in their early twenties and hated living in the house. Both had already moved most of their stuff out of the house and were catching flack from their family for doing that. Three generations lived in that house. On Monday, I overheard the two of them complaining about catching flack and one of them said:"I wish the old place would burn down", then the other smirked. On Saturday night, the old place went up in a spectacular fire. When we arrived, fire was coming out of every window and doorway, and through the roof. It took all night to put it out. Two things bothered me: 1) That particular night, all three generations of the family was out of town, including Anthony and Frank. 2) We found a center door ajar. Next to that door had been a library. The scorch marks clearly indicated the library as one point of origin (which raced up a wooden staircase), but it didn't explain how the fire was equally spread on all three floors. It was like a "Perfect Storm" of fire had destroyed the old house. Charges were never filed as an allegation was never made. The cause of fire was officially ruled "accidental" as arson couldn't be proved. Frank and Anthony happily settled in their new residences and the two older generations moved out of town.
As of last week, even medium quality alfalfa hay is going for between $100-$250 (USD) per ton, i.e. 2000 lbs, depending on locale where it is being sold. So that could be a small stack only having 800 tons in it. Each normal sized (small square) bale generally weights about 80 to 100 lbs, so a person can figure it out. Each ton would be between 20 and 25 bales. Now if it was Timothy hay, which isn’t unlikely since that is a dry-land grass type hay, that stuff is even more expensive. It starts at $200 a ton and goes as high as $280 in Nevada. And that price is IN PLACE so that means you (the buyer) have to pay that tariff to start with, and come and get it yourself. Now that can become a very expensive proposition. So a $200,000 haystack isn't that far out of the realm of possibility, in fact that might be considered a rather small stack. My Dad and younger Brother have taken about 6,000 acres of our largest farm out of grain production, and gone to complete dry-land alfalfa on a custom share basis with a guy who cuts, bales and stacks it on shares. They make about $350,000 a year on their third share, and do none of the physical labor. Not a bad plan all things considered.
