Search for firefighter excitement burns out of control

By WARREN GAMBLE

In her green ranger's uniform, Terry Lynn Barton patrolled America's Rocky Mountain forests with a love for the outdoors and a message straight from Smokey Bear: "Only you can prevent forest fires."

Yesterday, the 38-year-old mother of two was indicted on federal counts of wilfully starting the largest blaze in Colorado's history, the Hayman fire, southwest of Denver.

It is still raging after destroying an area of forest almost the size of Lake Taupo in the past two weeks.

Investigators now doubt Barton's story that she accidentally started the blaze after burning a letter from her estranged husband at a forest campsite.

Her original story was that she had found the fire on a routine patrol, but she confessed to the letter-burning when arson experts found inconsistencies, including that the wind was blowing the wrong way for her to smell smoke.

They now say evidence at the scene shows the fire was deliberately lit and staged to look like an out-of-control campfire.

The biggest mystery to fellow Forest Service officers is why one of their own would betray their profession so spectacularly.

Among the theories being considered by prosecutors is that Barton wanted to be a hero - that by "discovering" the fire and putting it out she would get the credit.

Instead, the fire raced beyond control and she is facing up to 65 years in prison.

The hero motive is a common thread in an extremely uncommon group - firefighters who become firelighters.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation 1994 study of the subject found firefighter arsonists were most commonly motivated by a desire for excitement and to be seen as heroic. New Zealand fire authorities share that view and say pyromania, a psychological obsession with fires, has not been seen among firefighters here.

This month Australian rural fire service volunteer Peter Burgess began a two-year prison term for starting most of the bushfires that ravaged eastern Australia last Christmas.

Burgess admitted lighting 25 fires that destroyed scores of homes and spread from the Blue Mountains to Sydney suburbs.

He told police he had resented the accolades received by the New York Fire Department after the September 11 terrorist attacks and yearned to be feted for his own firefighting heroics.

Firefighter arsons were almost unknown in New Zealand until a remarkable explosion of offences in 1998 and 1999.

Thirteen volunteer firefighters were convicted in 18 months for offences that ranged from setting a rubbish bin alight to serial arsons, usually in scrub or abandoned buildings.

Many were reasonably new recruits who the Fire Service believe succumbed to their desire for excitement when their expectations of an adrenalin-charged job was not matched by the more mundane reality of brigade service.

The most publicised case involved the Mangakino volunteer brigade where three firefighters, including the chief fire officer, Philip Chadderton, were convicted of arson.

An unusual motive emerged at Chadderton's trial. The two firefighters who had admitted taking part in the torching of an empty warehouse said Chadderton planned it because he feared losing one of the town's fire trucks unless the callout rate was improved.

There had been rumours the Fire Service would take one of the town's two appliances. Chadderton was arrested after a year-long police investigation into up to 12 suspicious fires.

He denied the warehouse arson charge but was convicted and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison.

In another high-profile case, Auckland volunteer Keith James Raymond was sent to jail for five years after admitting 21 arsons over five years in West Auckland.

Raymond, a 41-year-old senior firefighter at the Laingholm volunteer brigade, never publicly explained his motive.

The Laingholm brigade chief, Graham Booth, said Raymond fitted no part of the profile for a firefighter arsonist.

He had his own established business, a stable family life and community connections. Even more puzzling was that his fires were lit in adjoining districts, mainly in bush scrub, meaning he was not called out to fight them.

Booth said Raymond's conviction shattered the small brigade. "There was disbelief. You can't believe that a guy who had been our friend and colleague could go out and do this because it's against everything you are there for.

"You feel so let down and upset. It's really tough."

Booth was a former president of the United Fire Brigade Association, representing the country's 8000 urban and 3000 rural volunteers.

He says it had been pushing the Fire Service for a formal screening programme for volunteers before the outbreak of offences.

Many brigade chiefs had felt vulnerable after changes to privacy and police computer legislation meant they could no longer check on the criminal history of new recruits.

Booth says the fear was hiring someone who was dishonest or violent rather than a potential arsonist.

The Fire Service said the 1998-99 outburst broke the widespread reluctance of firefighters to accept there was a potential arson problem, however small.

With little international experience to work from, the service conducted its own interviews with colleagues of the convicted arsonists to establish a broad profile.

The Fire Service director of human resources, Vince Arbuckle, says the excitement motive was one of the more common themes.

"In many of the cases we have had, particularly with the young guys, when this excitement doesn't happen they decide to create it themselves.

"They are often first at the station or at the scene, and they have an abnormal level of excitement."

An examination of the 13 firefighter arson cases also discovered that almost all those convicted had a criminal history, mainly for dishonesty offences.

As a result the Fire Service introduced a screening process that includes a formalised police check, an application form and interviews designed to uncover warning signals. Among them are an erratic work history or unstable family life, although they alone would not rule recruits out.

Since the screening process was introduced in April 2000, there has been only one conviction - an 18-year-old Stratford volunteer who joined the brigade before the process took effect.

In that case the volunteer showed high levels of excitement at the scene of fires he lit, and shared suspiciously accurate knowledge about the blazes.

Arbuckle says the clean sheet since screening is welcome, but it was not an exact science and potential arsonists with complex motives could slip through.

"The vast majority of firefighters are so selfless and community-spirited that this is just an aberration at the outer fringes.

"The very reason it's repugnant is that it is so unusual, and so much the antithesis of what firefighting is about."

In Colorado, a shocked Forest Service colleague of Terry Barton likened the discovery of an arsonist in their midst to "finding out it was a family member who did this ... just a feeling of [being] real sad and bewildered".

Barton's equally bewildered family say she put her life into the forest, and was constantly preaching about being careful with fire.

What drove her on June 8 to start a blaze that has now destroyed more than 54,000ha, 25 homes and forced the evacuation of 6000 people will be the biggest question in her court case.