Forensics Journal - Stevenson University 2014 | Page 32

FORENSICS JOURNAL What are the Best Practices for Preventing, Identifying and Investigating Arson by Firefighters? Christopher E. Allen The fire station in the bucolic northern Vermont village of Albany was destroyed by fire in August 2013. The town, whose closest mutual aid department was forty minutes away, lost all of its fire apparatus. Immediately following the fire, Albany Fire Department Safety Officer Elmer Joerg was interviewed by the media as Joerg was one of the first volunteer firefighters on scene. During a rambling six minute interview, Joerg told WCAX News how “frustrated he was by the crime” and stated “if somebody calls for help tomorrow I don’t know what we’re going to do” (Reading). Within five days, Joerg was arrested for setting the very fire that had “frustrated” him. Joerg confessed after being captured on video surveillance setting the fire, having used his personal access code to enter the station (Reading). Further research revealed that a business and a house owned by Joerg had previously burned (in separate incidents). The house fire resulted in the death of Joerg’s father in law. Investigators planned on reopening both of these cases. unpublished novel entitled Points of Origin, a book “that authorities said mirrored his own life as a firefighter and serial arsonist” (Lee). Some firefighter arsonists are lone wolves while others act in groups or teams. One recent example of a lone firefighter arsonist was a volunteer firefighter in New Hampshire arrested in September 2013 for setting multiple fires in February 2013 (Haas). A recent example of a firefighter arsonist team is that of a current volunteer firefighter and a former volunteer firefighter from the same department, who were arrested in September 2013 for setting fire to a vacant factory in Sellersville, Pennsylvania. Controlling and extinguishing the fire required the response of 16 fire departments and 200 firefighters from two counties (Domizio). A unique case involving a group of arsonist occurred in the late 1990’s, when a “former volunteer firefighter was attempting to secure his position back and encountered resistance from the chief ” (United States Fire Administration 10). The former volunteer firefighter and