Honestly, I think the most likely culprits could be people who are in financial trouble due to the real estate and mortgage markets. Getting insurance for a totally destroyed house would solve a lot of people’s problems right now (from individual homeowners to real estate developers), and having their loss be part of a large scale fire like this minimizes the chance that the circumstances of their particular home loss will be closely scrutinized by an insurer looking for evidence of arson. It appears that much of this fire originated from accidental causes, but the beginning of a big fire in their area could well have started a few people down the road of thinking “Actually it wouldn’t be so bad if my house (that I’m about to lose anyway) burned down” and then on to “I could make sure that happens”.
One dirty little secret is a surprisingly large number of wildfire arsons are set by firefighters.
Unfortunately, the bank holding the mortgage would almost certainly be the loss payee on the insurance policy, so all the poor schnook would get would be personal property to the extent of the insurance on that ... which except for a few companies that issue replacement coverage (like USAA for us veterans) is not even close to what they'd lose. Even replacement coverage only covers things to a limit, and most people don't have the personal articles floaters to cover their serious valuables (art, jewelry, silver, computers, musical instruments, etc.). It would be a VERY DUMB DARWIN CANDIDATE who set a wildfire to get out of a bad mortgage - bankruptcy would be less painful!
I think you are right. Arson for insurance is an old one. But, really, we don’t know. The terrorism angle, I thought of that immediately in 2003, but today at work, some of our sheeple type were even saying that is what they think!
Jeff Head says he wrote about it, in a book years ago. I myself discussed writing a book about a disgruntled forestry worker that set timing devices in the western woods, as payback for his lost job/miserable life. That was in 1994.
Anyone could have done this, for a number of reasons.
Also, remember tainted Tylenol? Lots of copycats....