Louis Aguilar and Joel Kurth focus on one block in Detroit to illustrate the city's arson problem in a story in Wednesday's Detroit News.
A neighborhood grudge started the trouble last month on Garland Street, on Detroit's east side. By night’s end, the resulting inferno destroyed nine houses and melted siding on homes that were spared, they write.
In the early hours of June 20, two rows of vacant homes burned to the ground. It began after fire officials arrested a man for torching a neighbor’s car. As he sat in jail, his house was the first up in flames.
The fires spread to three other homes on the west side of Garland, then another five were torched up the street. Neighbors say they were fueled by a familiar cycle of foreclosure, abandonment and scrapping. On Garland, like so many streets in the city, there are too many empty homes and too many people seeking revenge through fire.
“Detroit has a culture of fire like no other city,” said Charles Simms, arson chief of the Detroit Fire Department. “People often use arson as an act of revenge or fraud much more than other cities.”
Authorities have no idea how many fires are deliberately set in Detroit, The News points out: officials are able to investigate only about a third of the suspicious fires because of limited resources. Of confirmed arson fires: insurance fraud remains the top motive. Revenge is No. 2: 300 of 1,500 investigated cases last year were considered acts of revenge.
