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Firefighter arson a long-standing issue – expert

firerescue1.com

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Re: Firefighter arson a long-standing issue – expert

#3

Post by tdu01 »

Australia gets very dry and pretty severe bush fires. We have the same unfortunate phenomena, 2019, 2023 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-31/hunter-valley-rfs-fir... There is a hero complex associated with this type of occupation, coupled with boredom perhaps. This is however not recurring theme, an anomaly in the statistics. Year on year we do have many brave, volunteer and professional firefighters rescue many properties and lives.

Re: Firefighter arson a long-standing issue – expert

#4

Post by keiferski »

Key information:

There’s roughly 100 firefighter arsonists convicted every year in North America and all of them are serial arsonists, which means three or more fires,” Nordskog told CBC.

According to Nordskog, firefighter arsonists tend to be young males who recently joined the fire service, who may become bored, desire recognition and struggle with anger or frustration.

All things considered, it’s probably a smaller percentage vs. doctors doing un-doctor things, cops, etc.

Re: Firefighter arson a long-standing issue – expert

#6

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS »

This is a completely useless article. Is 100 a lot? The article never even hints at what percentage of firefighters that is, let alone total arsonists. Should we be outraged? Are firefighters more likely to be arsonists?

It says "in North America", so I assume that's across US and Canada. There are 1.2 million firefighters in the US, and about 150k in Canada, so let's call it 1.3 million. 100 out of 1.3 million is statistically irrelevant.

How's that stack up against the general public? That'd be good to know, but the article doesn't touch on it. The latest data i can find is for the US in 2024, where there were 65,795 arson convictions. There are 349 million people in the US, so the number of arsonists is 0.0001% of the general population. The number of firefighters that are arsonists (100/65,795) is 0.0015%, so I suppose it's slightly higher that the general population.

All this should have been in the article.

Re: Firefighter arson a long-standing issue – expert

#8

Post by [deleted] »

keiferski wrote: post #4

Key information: There’s roughly 100 firefighter arsonists convicted every year in North America and all of them are serial arsonists, which means three or more fires,” Nordskog told CBC. According to Nordskog, firefighter arsonists tend to be young males who recently joined the fire service, who may become bored, desire recognition and struggle with anger or frustration. All things considered, it’s probably a smalle…

[deleted]

Re: Firefighter arson a long-standing issue – expert

#9

Post by user- »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #6

This is a completely useless article. Is 100 a lot? The article never even hints at what percentage of firefighters that is, let alone total arsonists. Should we be outraged? Are firefighters more likely to be arsonists? It says "in North America", so I assume that's across US and Canada. There are 1.2 million firefighters in the US, and about 150k in Canada, so let's call it 1.3 million. 100 out of 1.3 million is st…

This 'article' (its a blog post if anything) is based on this this CBC article.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fires-set-by-firefig...

The article refers to a report that 404s.

Both the OPs post and the CBC article say records aren't detailed for this so unless theres some studies (lol funding in current political era) you prob will never have real percents.

But i think its fair to say yea firefighters are more likely to be arsonists i guess.

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