Federal Arson Programs Reviewed At Fifth Annual USFA Conference
“Are arsonists burning up your community and if so, what can be done about it?” provided the theme for the fifth annual conference of the United States Fire Administration which was held in New Orleans January 21-23 at the New Orleans Hilton. More than a thousand attendees from all over the United States paid close attention to the professionals in fire protection, law enforcement, municipal management, prosecution and insurance industries who presented their own efforts and techniques used in effective anti-arson programs. Major topics covered were the review of federal arson programs, the arson task force, the attack on arson, and the arson solution.
In a call for action that opened the conference, John W. Macy, Jr., director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called the crime of arson a national hazard and one of the nation’s most serious threats, which is why “the reduction of arson is a new and high priority objective of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
“Arson demands the concern of your state, your local government and your neighborhoods,” he told the audience. “Under the Carter Administration, he said, the federal government has provided the interagency assistance program to stimulate a more aggressive program against arson.”
Society’s response against the arsonist has far too long been to accept the outrage and only weakly act in preventing and punishing the crime of arson, according to Gordon Vickery, administrator of the USFA. In his opening remarks, he stressed that “this conference will make it clear that arson is a malignant cancer to which all our jurisdictions lie exposed.”
Vickery pointed out that everyone has a part in developing a community’s defense, but that more than effort is needed to get the job done.
“It will take perseverance, creativity and a willingness to take risks, he added. “Join me and let’s get on with it.”
Financial motives paramount
Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O’Neill III of Massachusetts in his keynote statement, declared that “more and more today, we are seeing people start fires for financial motives—to bail out a failing business or a declining neighborhood, or simply to make easy money.” Fires caused by this financial motive far exceeded the number caused by other motives such as revenge or psychopathic thrills, he said, and the financially motivated arsonists “are the most despicable because they destroy buildings and endanger lives simply from greed.”
Arson, however, is not performed by villains in a vacuum, O’Neill explained, pointing to government programs that were designed to protect people (promote access to insurance and ensure fairness) and at times have unanticipated side effects. In exploring this point, O’Neill used as an example laws governing regulated lenders such as banks that allow depositors to sue if banks do not carry out their fiduciary responsibilities.
When money becomes tight, he said, banks look for low-risk investments and turn away from high-risk clients. In effect, they bail out of unstable housing areas. When this happens, unregulated lenders—mortgage companies—then become involved. In some cases, O’Neill said, these companies deal in FHA insured mortgages. These mortgages (a well-intentioned federal program) absolve mortgage companies “of the burden of owning empty properties if they foreclose.”
Staff photos
“In fact, O’Neill said, “the government won’t pay those mortgages until the tenants are evicted. Then the buildings lie vacant during HUD-FHA disposition proceedings. The empty buildings are then inviting to arsonists.”
O’Neill stated that he did not want to give the audience an entirely bleak picture on the arson problem, and drew attention to the success of anti-arson programs in Boston and Seattle.
In concluding his keynote address, O’Neill called for “more to be done. The federal government must seek swift implementation of regulations it is devising to deal with FAIR plans,” he said.
Further, he called for insurance companies to require information on applications to estimate the true value and actual ownership of properties, and that state legislatures must support these efforts. Tied in with this, he called for regulated lenders to comply with the community reinvestment act to upgrade the neighborhoods they serve.
O’Neill ended by saying that police and prosecutors must realize that only through joint efforts (with all agencies concerned) and close collaboration will the arson problem be solved.
Arson drains taxes
“The economics of arson goes far beyond the kind of arson which turns a profit for the arsonist,” in the view of Gloria M. Jimenez, administrator, Federal Insurance Administration, “because when we examine all of the economic effects of arson, the motivation becomes irrelevant. The evidence here is every bit as glaring as the numbers in the legal books.”
The evidence, Jimenez said, lies in abandoned and gutted buildings which deface entire neighborhoods and have a devastating impact on the value of surrounding properties. These shells, she added, drain tax dollars from the community, breed other crimes which sap the city’s revenues, and must ultimately be removed at the community’s expense.
Evidence also lies, Jimenez commented, in boarded-up or shabby businesses which can neither survive or inject any economic life into dead commercial districts. She noted that deteriorating properties have little hope of being improved because financial investment has dried up.
“The atmosphere,” she declared, “is one where all types of crime become commonplace and where arson practically acquires a certain logic.”
Jimenez warned that if we never get at the roots of the conditions, where arson enjoys such a flourishing existence, we will have only limited success in its eradication. She advised that there are two separate tracks to follow: one on which arson can be effectively treated as a problem in itself, and one whereby we can treat the disease of which arson is the worst common sympton.
The immediate task, she said, is to deter those who are motivated solely by the economics of arson. She called on the financial community—lenders, insurers, investors—to determine what can be done to sift the arsonist out of the process they use to protect financial futures. The administrator, like some of the other speakers, called for a comprehensive and coordinated information system and stressed that “we have reached the point where we can no longer afford to tolerate the obstacles which stand in the way of such a process. An information exchange, she urged, should go beyond just the insurers and law enforcement officials, and include fire inspectors and building and code officials.
Insurance underwriting is the area where the two tracks of treatment might collide, according to Ms. Jimenez, since it touches on arson as both disease and symptom. Withholding of insurance from entire blocks, or neighborhoods, she explained, would remove any possible economic incentive to arson. “Unfortunately,” she added, “it would have just as devastating effect on that area as the arson threat which it attempts to attack.” The easy solution, she noted, is not available because “while it would cure the symptom, it would kill the patient.”
In addition to the information system, solutions to the arson disease offered by Ms. Jimenez included better training of claims adjusters and more and better inspections to be made on buildings and neighborhoods before insurance is written.
Sophisticated systems needed
The insurance industry is combatting arson through new selective programs, according to T. Lawrence Jones, president of the American Insurance Association, and not by raising insurance premiums. Jones stated that “crude broad blade attacks on arson fraud would not help very much, and would cost as much money as they would attempt to save.” He added that the industry is way beyond primitive initiatives and that seeking out suspect claims requires less the bludgeon of total investigation than the delicate balance of increasingly sophisticated systems and ideas.
“Through training, through such coalitions as the Insurance Committee for Arson Control and through such futuristic concepts as the Property Insurance Register, the insurance industry is attacking arson directly.”
It does not meet the problem of arson by simply raising premiums, he said. We are fighting arson every way we can find. One such effort, he explained, involves the Property Loss Insurance Register, a computer system that cross-references the essential data from fire losses around the country. It can check on duplicate insurance being applied to the same fire loss history of a person, even one from a large city. Geographical oddities, such as a loss history of certain locations or any claims reported at an insured’s previous residence, can be traced.
The Property Loss Insurance Register, Jones said, is a new subscription service of the American Insurance Association.
“I am not talking about a planned enterprise,” he added, “the register exists now. Insurance companies that write some 90 percent of the fire insurance in the United States have joined. Their adjusters are right now sending in the forms from which the data is fed to the computer.”
Strengthen penal codes
In another area of arson control, Morag Fullilove, secretary of the Insurance Committee for Arson Control, stated that “States must strengthen their arson penal codes, while Congress should permanently make arson a major crime.”
Fullilove said that her committee has researched the penal code in the 20 states writing the highest volume of property insurance, and that this research reveals several deficiencies in many state laws—deficiencies that handicap sound arson control. For this reason, she said, “this year the insurance trade associations will be working with interested groups to strengthen state laws to conform with a Model Arson Penal Code that the insurance industry has developed.”
Another of her committee’s projects, Fullilove added, has been the publishing of an arson control directory of resource materials for national, state, and local task forces.
Federal agency participation
The federal agencies comprised a panel that covered a review of federal arson programs and which was moderated by Joseph A. Moreland, deputy administrator of the USFA. Moreland stated that this conference represented the first tangible step in bringing together those federal agencies, publicly, before the fire service to address and describe the problem of arson. In introducing his panel, Moreland noted that “historically, arson has been considered a problem for law enforcement agencies, the fire service and the insurance companies.” But, he added, “in truth, it is none of these, but is all of them.”
Robert Grimes of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, in discussing the mission of his agency, noted that the agency was the prime source of funding for other agencies working against arson, but cautioned that his agency does not have unlimited funds. However, Grimes said, “we have allocated substantial resources this year to several programs.”
Funds for arson task force
Foremost among these programs was the funding for 35 states (out of 153 applicants) to establish arson task forces. To dispel some doubts, Grimes advised his audience that fire departments and fire officials, in addition to other agencies, were eligible to receive LEAA funds to be used for enforcement purposes.
Funds were also available, he added, for the National College of District Attorneys to conduct seminars on prosecution of arson and for assisting states in collecting data to be used in the FBI’s uniform crime reporting system. Training funds are also available to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, FBI and the USFA, he said.
The USFA’s role in the federal antiarson struggle, according to Richard Strother, associate administrator, is to provide technical assistance and access to resources to officials at the local level. Strother drew attention to the USFA’s report to Congress that provides a framework for federal, state and local action. This report, he said, has 67 specific recommendations and he urged the audience to read them carefully since they provide a framework for attacking the problem.
Forming, planning and supporting arson task forces is still another tool provided by his administration, Strother said, along with training in the investigation and prosecution of arson both at the National Fire Academy and in the academy’s outreach program.
We are also paying specific attention to the volunteer fire fighters’ needs in the area of arson, Strother stressed, and he drew attention to his administration’s arson resource center which publishes a monthly resource bulletin on the who, the why and the where on the latest programs available. Other assistance available, he said, included a juvenile fire setters counselling manual and a media public education kit, both available on written request.
Fire science research
The Center for Fire Research at the National Bureau of Standards is also committed to the fight against arson, said Robert S. Levine, chief of the Fire Science Division. Prominent in the fight is the preparation of a fire investigator’s handbook, and a study of the psychological aspects of various kinds of arsonists. In another area, he said, the center is working with forensic laboratories to develop a consensus standard on accelerant analysis.
The handbook, he noted, features summarized instructions for completing various parts of a fire investigation, along with checklists and tips on how to avoid subsequent legal snares. It will also contain descriptive chapters on building construction, utility systems and the physics and chemistry of fire. When the handbook finally appears, it will be distributed through the National Fire Academy.
Other panelists included representatives from the Federal Insurance Administrative, the United States Forest Service, the United States Postal Service, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The reasons why
Motivation for arson in the opinion of Patricia Mieszala, psychiatric burn nurse clinician in Cook County Hospital, Chicago, is sparked by financial gain, psychopathology, experimentation, herioic suicide attempts, revenge and attention needs.
Arson is a far more complex event than just deliberate fire setting, she said, once we begin to look at the why and the who behind each event. There is no one single answer to why someone sets a fire, no one umbrella profile of a fire setter and no single universal approach in what works to eradicate such behavior.
“Since research findings with adult arsonists are based on those who have been apprehended, our knowledge about the adult arsonist remains incomplete, Mieszala said, adding that “we are however beginning to learn more of the character profile, environmental surroundings and needs of the juvenile fire setter.”
This is the beginning, she noted, and it points us in the direction of scratching the surface of the needs of the children who are telling us something through their fire play and fire setting behavior. Researchers have attempted to categorize fire setters, Mieszala stated, and one of them has come up with three categories: arson for profit, solitary and group fire setters. She stressed that arson for profit is not limited to lower income people. Affluent housewives have been known to start a smoky fire to collect insurance money for redecorating. And a welfare recipient might start one to get a better apartment.
Among other methods, she singled out punishment or its threat as a means of a preventive measure toward arsonists’ behavior. This requires coordinated actions at all levels to catch and convict such individuals, she concluded.
Solution by direct attack
“Arson is a nightmare that just won’t go away” was the comment of Chief Andrew Casper, who chaired a panel whose subject was Arson: the Solution. Casper drew attention to “the incredible statistics produced by incendiary fires,” noting that arson on a national average has increased more than 900 percent over a 16-year period and that in the same span arson rose 890 percent in San Francisco. “The statistics for your city are probably about the same,” he told his audience.
Direct arson losses in the country amount to about $3 billion every year, Casper said, and in San Francisco they account for one third the fire loss— about $6 million.
“Talking about the problem, issuing reports and then filing them away does not solve the problem,” he said. “You try to solve it in the same way you put out fires—by direct attack.”
Responding to Casper’s words, Chief John P. Reardon, New Haven, Conn., spelled out how his city was using the direct attack. Based on a review of statistics and the results of a grand jury investigation, New Haven formed a mayor’s task force which produced recommendations that included increased training for all police and fire personnel, the formation of a joint police/fire arson squad and the creation of an arson information system to collect and analyze all pertinent arson-related data.
“Next,” Reardon said, “the concept of a pre-fire arson early warning system was developed. Factory Mutual Engineering System, the U. S. Fire Administration and Aetna Life and Casualty then funded a research project titled “Arson Warning and Prevention Strategy.”
The project attempted to identify significant differences between buildings which have suspicious fires and those that do not, Reardon said, and noted that preliminary findings indicate that key arson predictors can be used as a basis for early warning systems.
“Key to implementation of the early warning system,” Reardon said, “was the arson task force which included representatives from the mayor’s office, local banks and savings associations, insurance firms and the housing industry.”
The task force discusses each arsonprone structure, he explained, and plans the proper intervention procedures to reduce the arson risk.
Toughest problem for volunteers
“You must put together a workable arson detection program with whatever means are available,” said Donald Ben Cypher, vice president of the Pennsylvania Association of Arson Investigators. Cypher’s remarks were addressed to the small community and rural areas.
And to be successful in facing and solving these problems, he said, it is advisable to have a good public awareness program. Also needed is some type of workable arson detection training program, Cypher added, as well as confident investigative personnel, interested law enforcement personnel and judicial personnel to assist in prosecution.
He noted that small communities will always have to overcome what he called the MELT syndrome, an acronym that stands for money, education, leadership and training.
“Remember,” Cypher stressed, “whether you live in a small town or in the boondocks, your problems are the same as the big-city dweller—maybe not in number, size or complexity, but basically and in proportion they are the same.”
USFA activities
“What a difference a year makes,” Gordon Vickery said, leading off on a special report of the USFA activities. He was referring to the hectic times that his administration had gone through, and the problems he had inherited from the previous administration. These problems were not so much ones of personality, he said, but stemmed from the major problem that faces any new organization—that of gearing up.
He took particular pride in the administration’s purchase of the National Fire Academy, the staffing of the academy and the setting up of and completion of the first course in January. Vickery said that it all happened in six or seven months and gave much of the credit to his competent and dedicated staff. Vickery was also proud of the accomplishments of the USFA’s National Fire Data Center and the Office of Planning and Education.
In addition to his earlier remarks, Richard Strother, associate administrator, Office of Planning and Education, stated that public fire education is the most important function of his office. He added that the Public Education Assistance Program (PEAP) is the most thoroughly developed program in his office and has as its aim the reduction of fire loss through the delivery of targeted public education programs at the local level. By working through the states, PEAP provides communities with coordination and leadership, programs and technical assistance.
Programs available at this time, he said, include the Gasoline Safety Kit, Pre-school Programs, the Cooking Fire Media Kit and a Home Inspection Program. He drew particular attention to the Anti-Arson Implementation Kit which was distributed to each registrant at the conference.
Home fire surveys are being coordinated by OPE, Strother said, on a national basis; surveys that are being conducted by civilians, some of whom are senior citizens. In areas where these surveys have been conducted, he added, some fire departments are reporting a significant reduction in fires and fire losses.
The National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) is probably the most significant and successful operation in the National Fire Data Center, according to Philip Schoenman, associate administrator, USFA. The reporting system requires local jurisdictions to send their data to a state office, usually the fire marshal’s office, where it is processed. Reports are then sent back to local jurisdictions, and on a quarterly basis to the data center, where they are combined with data from other sources to develop national estimates.
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Nearly 6000 fire departments are now reporting to NFIRS, Schoenman said, and he informed the audience that the center will send NFIRS software to any fire department interested in starting the data system for its own use. The system has been in operation for four years, he commented, and there are 30 states participating. Another seven states are expected to join in 1980 and by 1982 he hopes all states to be enrolled.
More accurate statistics on life and property losses is another aim of the data center, Schoenman said, plus data on fire fighter injuries, some of which is already available. He feels that the data developed will be of special use to fire chiefs in administering their departments. Planning, budgeting and the allocation of equipment and apparatus are just a few of the uses for this data.
A “bull session” that permitted attendees to sit down for discussions with conference speakers was held on t he first two days of the conference following the presentations.
The conference closed at luncheon on the third day which was held in the exhibits area. Here most of the agencies who participated in the program held demonstrations and presentations in their booths. In general, the presentations were designed to provide attendees with “a tool or technique” for handling most aspects of arson.
