Discounting volcanoes and meteorites, there are two types of ignition sources for wildfires – dry lightning and humans. We may further sub-divide human ignition sources into accidental and deliberate.

From Climate Scepticism

BY JIT

Human-started fires: denialist meme or growing problem, Part 1

Discounting volcanoes and meteorites, there are two types of ignition sources for wildfires – dry lightning and humans. We may further sub-divide human ignition sources into accidental and deliberate.

Deliberate fires, including wildfires, are nothing new, and examples abound. But there are some key questions about wildfire arson that it would useful to have answers to. What proportion of fires are arson? Is it increasing? What motivates arsonists? Is their motivation changing?

The question of what proportion of wildfires are arson has become a minor skirmish in the climate wars. One side likes to emphasize arson as a way of diminishing the role of climate change; the other side likes to diminish arson as a way of emphasizing the importance of climate change. As usual, I prefer to find out the truth. The truth, after all, is the only useful answer, except as propaganda.

Naturally this topic is going to take up more than a single blog post – it wasn’t when I started, but then the earth started falling away beneath my feet. So my explorations will emerge in bite-sized digestible chunks, I hope, of which this in an introductory.

My starting point was the 2019-20 Australian bushfires – “Black Summer.” What did the 2020 Royal Commission say about arson? I obtained the 594-page document, went CTRL-F, typed “arson”, and found two hits… both relating to the name “Carson.” The word “arson” is not in the Royal Commission report, anywhere. You would think the Royal Commission might find it worthwhile to report what it found about the causes of fires. But they don’t. Beyond the boiler-plate climate change genuflections, there is nothing at all about ignition sources. [A slight exaggeration; they note that pyrocumulonimbus clouds can create dry lightning far ahead of fire fronts, and start new fires there.] [Note: New South Wales’s own Inquiry found that most of the largest fires were started by lightning, and that none of the large ones were arson.]

But we know that arson played at least a small role in the 2019-20 bushfires, so this seems a strange omission on the part of the Royal Commission. Perhaps the deliberate fires were small and easily contained? It would be useful to know. It would also be useful to know what motivated the arsonists. Pyromaniacs, or motivated by self-interest, thrill-seeking, or acting out a role in an apocalyptic cult?

I wonder what Wiki says. Wiki is a trustworthy source, isn’t it? Its page on the 2019-20 bushfires has a subsection titled “Exaggerated extent of arson,” which is not matched by an equivalent subsection titled “Exaggerated extent of climate change.” In these paragraphs, Wiki takes pains to discount the role of arson. Arson, it is claimed, is a denialist ploy. Its first excerpt (from The Guardian) makes clear its position:

The Guardian reported “Bot and troll accounts are involved in a ‘disinformation campaign’ exaggerating the role of arson in Australia’s bushfire disaster, social media analysis suggests… The false claims are, in some cases, used to undermine the link between the current bushfires and the longer, more intense fire seasons brought about by climate change.”

Well, we will get to the longer and more intense fire seasons brought about by climate change another day. Suffice it to say that according to Wiki we need to move on from discussion of arson.

Giovanni Torre wrote for The Telegraph that “Australia’s bushfire crisis has led to what appears to be a deliberate misinformation campaign started by climate-change deniers claiming arson is the primary cause of the ongoing fires… Social media accounts, including Donald Trump Jr’s Twitter account, circulated the false claim that 183 people had been arrested for arson during the Australian fire crisis…”

To its credit, Wiki immediately admits that 183 people were in fact arrested in connection with the fires – but only 24 in connection with arson. But up and down and front to back, arson as a potential cause is diminished.

Without knowing anything about the frequency of arson, an obvious default assumption is that it is generally increasing. That is because, if we take as an assumption that a constant low proportion of people start fires, then as the population grows, so will the population of firestarters. We might also guess that, being human, arsonists are lazy. They won’t drive for hours into the bush and then hike ten miles from the nearest track to start a fire there. They’ll start one closer to home. If true, this has two consequences. First is that the fire is likely to be discovered faster and dealt with before it gets out of control. Second is that it begins in proximity to people, and has the direct potential to cause harm immediately, whereas remote natural fires have to gain quite a head of steam before they interact with people. In fact, in a modern technological society, a fire that starts in a remote place should be incapable of killing civilians in a not-remote place, as there should be plenty of time for evacuations. Something else we might wonder about is how easy it is to decide whether a particular fire was arson or not. (More on which on another day.)

Searching back through the archives of wildfiretoday.com, it is easy to find anecdotes about arson. Before Black Summer, Australia’s ABC ran a story about copycat firestarters in Western Australia:

“Bushfire media coverage causes ‘copycat’ fires, WA firefighter says”

Some guy’s ipse dixit, even if he knows what he’s talking about, is not great evidence. But what does he say?

Bushfires have dominated the news in Western Australia since the new year, but for volunteer firefighters, the 24-hour media coverage has a dark side. It is called copycat syndrome, which they believe is at least partly responsible for a spate of deliberately lit fires this season. “The more media exposure you get, you just seem to see the copycat syndrome, as we commonly call it, starting to come out,” said Dave Gossage, a volunteer firefighter for 34 years. “Sadly, in this space of deliberately lit fires, no matter who lights them, they often don’t understand the consequences. “You’ve only got to look at the Roleystone fires 12 months on and people are still rebuilding their homes.”Via Wildfiretoday.com

…

Dr Katarina Fritzon from the Centre for Arson Research at Queensland’s Bond University said about a third of fires nationally were deliberately lit but she believed only a small sub-group of arsonists fully understand the damage they can do. She described these offenders as people who are “particularly drawn to fire and get very excited by the stimulation that they get from setting fires”.Ibid.

Going back further, to the “Black Saturday” fires of the 2008-9 bushfire season, arson was blamed for the death of ten:

Brendan Sokaluk, 39, appeared on Tuesday in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court in Australia via video link from prison. He is facing 191 charges related to one of the fires that burned across Victoria on February 7, including 10 counts of arson causing death, intentionally causing a bushfire, criminal damage, recklessly causing injury, and possessing child pornography.Via Wildfiretoday.com

Sokaluk was thrown in jail, and may by now have been released, according to these news snippets:

And another from Black Saturday:

Two teenage boys were arrested for starting a fire in Australia on Black Saturday last February 7 in which a disabled resident burned to death. The Maiden Gully fire near Bendigo killed Kevin “Mick Kane, 48, destroyed 60 homes, caused $29 million in damages, and burned 875 acres.Via Wildfiretoday.com

Nevertheless, there is a lot less evidence for widespread arson in the 2019-20 season. Searching for news on this you will find that climate change is squarely blamed; and as with Wiki, many outlets place any mention of arson as a mark of denialism.

But if you delve into the archives, it was not always thus. The Sydney Morning Herald was willing to run an article on arson in New South Wales in January 2020 (i.e. in the middle of Black Summer).

A data collation and investigation plan has been developed to review the cause and impacts of the more than 1700 bushfires already reported to police; and consider the 12,000 fires recorded by the Rural Fire Service since August 2019,” police said in a statement released on Friday. Of those 1700, police say that 716 were deliberate lit.

…

Another 745 were of an undetermined cause, while 156 were caused naturally, police believe.

…

New figures provided by police on Friday showed that legal action has been taken against 55 people for fires that were allegedly deliberately lit since August 1. That figure includes people dealt with under mental health provisions, those given cautions and those charged with criminal offences. Legal action has also been taken against 126 people for allegedly failing to comply with a total fire ban, against 41 for throwing out a lit cigarette and against 70 juveniles for bushfire-related offences.SMH, op. cit.

Note that the numbers of different causes do not add up to the total number of bushfires, even given that one of the “causes” is “undetermined.” But the upshot appears to be that the largest fires of Black Summer were started by lightning. Quite a few fires were started by arsonists, but (reading between the lines and applying Psychology 101) these were close to human habitation and quickly spotted and stifled. There is always the lurking possibility that a truly nefarious human could be bothered to drive 20 miles out of town and start a fire in such a way that it would be later ascribed to the weather, but we have no evidence of that.

More on arson in a future episode. I will also hopefully get around to covering dry lightning and how it is likely to change in frequency going forwards, if at all. There are also one or two other things to clear up.

But for now, I leave you with a Wednesday bonus story from the 2019-20 bushfire season. Not a story about arson, but about how bovine stupidity can cause a rapid conflagration when the conditions are right (with apologies for the language; I’m sure there are actually fruitier exchanges between the parties on record but I can’t find them any more):

“Are we authorised to land in some of these areas for the guys to get out and have a piss?” [an anonymous presumably male major] said.The Guardian

Well, the guys landed their chopper and got out – but their bladders were not full enough to counter what happened next:

Smoke and visibility issues meant the landing light was switched on, but “the heat from the aircraft’s landing light caused the dry grass which the aircraft came in contact with to ignite”.

“Within 3-5 seconds of touch down a fire was ignited underneath the aircraft, which was fanned by the rotor wash,” Defence documents said.ABC

The guys hot-footed it back aboard, and by now apparently bursting, made a bee-line straight back to the airfield. They arrived 45 minutes [According to the ABC; The Guardian says 17 minutes] later, and mentioned in passing to some guy leaning on a broom that they might have started a fire somewhere, while vaguely waving in the direction of Namadgi. Meanwhile smoke had already been seen, and spotters were running around like decapitated chickens trying to find the source. By the time they did, it was too late to snuff the fire out.

The fire, which burned for five weeks, was declared out of control after 6pm [4.5 hours after it was started] when more than 1,000ha were alight and would eventually grow to burn 87,923ha throughout the ACT.The Guardian, op.cit.

Note: refer also to John’s piece from two years ago on the Greek wildfires, and comments below.