Authored By: J. P. Prestemon, D. T. Butry
Jeffrey P. Prestemon and David T. Butry
USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station
Over 1.5 million fires are set by arsonists each year in the United States, resulting in over $3 billion in damages. Arson is a leading cause of wildfire in several heavily populated states, including California and Florida. Since wildland arsonists often set fires near values at risk, arson wildfires cause a disproportionate amount of the damage attributed to wildfire in general. Several recent large wildfires were intentionally set, including the Hayman fire near Denver in 2002, which caused damages exceeding $100 million (Kent et al. 2002). In spite of the potentially staggering economic losses associated with such events, wildland arson has received scant attention in the literature. Research into wildfire management and wildland fire management policy in the U.S. have been principally concerned with wildfire suppression, fuel treatments, fire physics, and overall economic efficiency questions. This is unfortunate, because wildfire in many parts of the United States and elsewhere is primarily a human-initiated phenomenon. In the southern U.S., nearly 80 percent of all wildfires are ignited by humans and hence the majority of damages experienced by landowners can be traced to human populations. Wildland arson in some parts of the United States comprises a quarter of all fire starts. These fires are set for a variety of possible reasons, but a primary feature of these fires is that they are ignited close to high values at risk: structures, principally, and hence also threaten human safety.
Research since the 1980s has shown some scope for interventions into wildland arson wildfire processes, in order to reduce their frequency and social impacts. A study by Donoghue and Main (1985) showed how law enforcement may play a role in wildland arson rates in the eastern U.S. Later research has statistically linked fuels management, law enforcement, and socioeconomic variables to wildland arson areas burned and ignition probabilities (Prestemon et al. 2002, Butry and Prestemon 2005, Prestemon and Butry 2005). Specific attention to the sources of wildfire ignitions has been absent in economic models of wildland fire management since their first appearance over 80 years ago (Sparhawk 1925) and in all models of resource management facing an endogenous risk.
We also contend that advances in our understanding of this phenomenon can be obtained by evaluating how wildland arson fits into the broader picture of crime. Until recently, wildland arson research has ignored recent findings that have documented spatial and temporal autocorrelation of criminal activities (hotspots) (e.g., Bowers and Johnson 2004). An understanding of wildland arson could also be enhanced by incorporating ideas regarding how crime is related to economic conditions (e.g., Burdett et al. 2003, Gould et al. 2002) and social phenomena and deviance (e.g., Surrette 2002, Jacob and Lefgren 2003).
The objectives of this paper are to (1) place wildland arson into the context of other sources of wildfire ignitions and wildfire damages in various parts of the United States and other countries; (2) place wildland arson into the context of crime, especially how wildland arson activity is related to and compares with other criminal activity; (3) outline recent empirical research and the methods used to describe wildland arson, with a particular focus on the timing and spatial relationships of arson ignitions and how ignitions are related to socioeconomic variables, drawing upon research in the U.S. and abroad; and (4) outline lessons for law enforcement and wildland managers who seek to reduce the economic and forest impacts of illegal firesetting. In objective 4, we synthesize how the research leads directly to strategies that could yield real reductions in wildland arson rates and their negative economic and sociological consequences.
Fire Session - Thursday Afternoon
corresponding author:
Jeffrey P. Prestemon
USDA Forest Service
Southern Research Station
PO Box 12254
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
919-549-4033
jprestemon@fs.fed.us
