Tag: arson

A volunteer firefighter pleaded guilty on Tuesday to starting a fire in 2009 that burned 1,500 acres in the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area north of the twin cities in Minnesota. The plea agreement stipulates that he will be sentenced to serve up to 120 days in jail, will be on probation for up to three years, and will have to pay restitution in the amount of $50,000 to $70,000.

From KARE11.com in 2009:

KARE spoke with two witnesses — a father and daughter — who helped lead authorities to Berken. They asked not to be identified out of fear for their safety.

They say they were driving to Forest Lake for groceries around 1 p.m. Monday when the father looked in his rearview mirror and saw something shoot out of the car behind him.

“I saw this stream of grey smoke, an explosion of fireworks,” he says. “I mean, red, white, blue, green. They just shot all over the place and it was instant flames.”

The daughter immediately called 911. They got behind the suspect’s car to get a look at his license plate, which had a red “Firefighter” emblem.

“I was really stunned,” the daughter says. “I’m like, I think this guy’s a firefighter.”

They followed the speeding suspect for about three miles but eventually lost him. Still, their description helped investigators identify Berken. He was arrested at the scene a few hours later while fighting the fire.

“I’m told he was taken into custody at one of the homes that had been evacuated,” says Lt. Paul Sommer of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff found Berken’s car parked at the fire department and later arrested him at the fire scene while he was fighting the fire.

Berken has a checkered past. In 1991 he was convicted of calling an airport and in a fake middle eastern accent threatening to blow it up. In another incident he called an airport control tower and said the pilot of his aircraft had a heart attack and he needed help landing the plane. He was sentenced to a year in federal prison for making false radio transmissions.

Berken also served 20 months in prison for several check-forgery and theft convictions.

When he first applied to be a volunteer with the Forest Lake Fire Department in 2005 he was rejected after a background check revealed his criminal history. He appealed to the Mayor at the time, Terry Smith, who reversed the decision but required that Berken serve an extended probationary period which ended in 2008. At about that same time that he was allowed onto the department, Berken, who owned a Ford dealership, donated a Ford F-350 equipped to fight fires to the fire department.

When Berken’s Ford dealership filed for bankruptcy in 2008, American Express alleged that the company used a charge card in 2007 to obtain just over $4 million in cash and had failed to repay more than $3.8 million.

From KBZK:

A Forest Service employee and a 23-year-old man, both from Dillon, Montana have admitted to charges of lighting trees on fire in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.

Kyle Lee Zimmerman, 23, and Christopher Erwin Clark, 26, pleaded guilty to the charge of damaging government property during a federal court session in Missoula on Tuesday.

According to a press release by the U.S. Department of Justice, on Oct. 17, 2009, Zimmerman, Clark and “S.K.” lit and attempted to light trees on fire in the Black Mountain area of the Dillon Ranger District in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. The trees were dead or dying due to pine beetle infestation.

Zimmerman and Clark are also accused of lighting trees on fire in the Birch Creek area on Oct.18, 2009.

Clark, who is currently employed with the Forest Service as a fire fighter, was a temporary employee in October 2009 and was involved in the suppression effort for the Birch Creek fires.

They each face possible penalties of one year in prison, a $100,000 fine and one year supervised release.

Sentencing has been set for Jan. 5, 2011. They are currently released on special conditions.

Two or three nights each week arson fires are being set along roadways on and near the Fond duLac Reservation in Minnesota. About 36 fires have been set, according to Mark Wurdeman, wildfire investigator for the Depoartment of Natural Resources. The BIA is offering a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible. The fires so far have been suppressed by firefighters before they have become large or burned any structures.

An arsonist has been setting fires in the Dandenong Ranges National Park in Victoria, Australia for the last four years. Maybe this arrest will be the end of it.

From the AAP:

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A Country Fire Authority volunteer charged with lighting scrub fires in Melbourne’s outer east since September last year has been remanded in custody. The 36-year-old man, who was not named, appeared in an out of session court hearing before a bail justice in the kitchen of the nearby Lilydale Police Station on Thursday night.

The man was arrested by Lilydale detectives on Wednesday after seven small scrub fires were reported burning on roadsides around Mount Evelyn about 2pm. The accused faces 23 counts each of deliberately lighting a bushfire and conduct endangering life, along with a drink-driving charge.

Lilydale Detective Senior Constable Brigette De Chirico told the hearing police would oppose bail because the accused was “an unacceptable risk to the community because he’s likely to commit further offences whilst on bail”.

She said the accused suffered depression, had an ongoing alcohol problem and allegedly committed the offences while “heavily intoxicated”.

“He has difficulty controlling his behaviour whilst he is intoxicated,” Detective De Chirico said.

The accused did not apply for bail. The bail justice, who was not named, remanded the man to appear in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday.

Speaking after the hearing, Lilydale Senior Detective Sergeant Allan Price said the charges related to fires deliberately lit as far back as September last year.

He said a team of detectives and support staff had worked “around the clock” since the investigation was launched in mid-November. He praised the community’s assistance which he said led to the arrest.

“It’s a real weight off a lot of people’s shoulders, the police and the community and these things don’t happen without the assistance of the community and they have been fantastic,” he said.

The Mount Evelyn man was arrested by local detectives on Wednesday after seven small scrub fires were reported burning on roadsides around the Mount Evelyn area, in Melbourne’s outer east, at about 2pm (AEDT).

A CFA spokesman confirmed earlier on Thursday that the man in custody was a volunteer but would not say how long he had been part of the organisation.

CFA chief executive Mick Bourke said volunteer screening processes involved police checks.

“The screening is that national police check process, which we started many years ago,” Mr Bourke told ABC Radio.

Miller-McCune has released the fourth in their series of five articles about the latest advances in managing wildland fires.

Part I: THE POWER OF ‘LOOK-DOWN’ TECHNOLOGY
Part II: UNDERSTANDING WILDFIRE BEHAVIOR AND PREDICTING ITS SPREAD
Part III: WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING ON U.S. FIRELINES
Part IV: CATCHING WILDFIRE ARSONISTS RED-HANDED
Part V: SMART SOLUTIONS GOING FORWARD

These are really well-done articles and are worth reading. Here is how the latest one, Part IV, about wildfire arsonists, begins:

Sixty-year-old grandmother Charmian Glassman, aka Ma Sparker, started 11 separate fires at Northern California’s Mt. Shasta in 1995, setting each within 10 feet of where she stopped her new Buick at the side of a winding woodsy road.

Her motive? To give her forest firefighter son enough fires to fight to prove himself a hero.

Consultant Paul Steensland, a veteran fire investigator and retired U.S. Forest Service senior special agent, frequently mentions this case when lecturing fire investigators. It’s a cautionary tale about getting too deeply invested in “profiles” of arsonists derived from the analysis of past offenders.

Although every arson case is different, these profiles — the most notable generated by research conducted by the FBI and the South Carolina Forestry Service in the mid-1990s — are markedly similar: Caucasian males in their teens or 20s, unemployed or marginally employed, blue-collar background, living alone or with parents. The profiles’ acceptance is why, even as officers were desperately searching for their arsonist on Mt. Shasta, Charmian Glassman managed to set a couple of fires right under their noses.

“She literally lit two fires within less than 50 feet of where officers were in the brush,” Steensland recalled, “because they just saw her pull by and could see her in her car and said, ‘She’s a grandmother.’ They had been conditioned to look for young white males.”

Thanks Dick