It was with intereset that I read an article today about a NY FireFighter charged with making hoax fire calls. Whilst it's not strictly arson, is it the precursor?
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24789162-5012748,00....
A NEW York fireman has been arrested for crying fire - when there was no fire.
Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta told NY1 television overnight that the rogue firefighter had been secretly calling comrades out to non-existent emergencies.
Commissioner Scoppetta did not describe the motives of what he called "simply outrageous" actions.
The firefighter faces up to seven years in jail if convicted of making false reports.
Now before EngineCo and others get a bee in their bonnet about me being "Anti-American"-
I couldn't give a flying crap what part of the world this happens in. This one happened to be on the web today.
What can we do about it?
Framing this in the same process we use for emergency management, what can we do to Prevent, Prepare, Respond and Recover?
How do we
prevent these people from joining the fire service?
How do we
prepare for such an event and the fallout this it is likely to bring both internally and externally?
How do we
respond? By this, think about the PR nightmare as well as internally within the ranks.
And how does a department
recover from the fallout?
A couple of PDF reports that may be of interest
from Australia on this issue can be downloaded at-
Firefighter arson : part 1 : incidence and motives
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/bfab/bfab016.html
Firefighter arson : part 2 : profile
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/bfab/bfab017.html
Firefighter arson : part 3 : a case study
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/bfab/bfab018.html
The report makes an interesting observation:
Despite the small number of incidents, the impact of firefighter arson can go well beyond the
damage caused by the fire itself. The community relies on and trusts its fire services, and the
lighting of fires by members of those services can undermine public confidence, particularly
given the accompanying media attention. This can affect community support in very direct ways,
such as funding of rural fire services. The fire service could suffer loss of morale or have its effectiveness compromised by the disruption of allegations and investigations. Damage to the fire service’s reputation could interfere with its ability to attract high quality recruits.