firebug

When I was young, in my early teens I think, the house at the end of our little private dead end road that lead to the driveways, caught on fire one night while the people who lived there were out.  It was a huge two story house and pretty much burned unrestrained.  The lots were big, one acre minimum, so the fire department kept it from spreading but couldn’t really do much more than that.  It was a four alarm fire and we all stood out in the street for hours watching it burn.  The flames looked like they went all the way up to heaven.  It was an awesome sight.

Early one morning a couple of weeks ago helicopters were circling our neighborhood.  I found out later in the day that a house two long blocks south and two short blocks east of us had burned.  This house had been vacant for about a year I think.  I used to walk by it a lot when I would walk the dog I shared with my daughter’s family.  I had just noticed a few days earlier that a garage with an apartment above it, several more blocks south and east, had burned recently.

Turns out we had a firebug in the area.  He set 10 fires in the small neighborhoods collectively known as ‘The Heights’, all places where no one was living.  His most recent fire was even further east of us.  My son-in-law told us yesterday that the police finally caught him.*

*Or maybe not.  My daughter says there was another fire Thursday night about 6 blocks over.  Now a total of 12.