Posted on 10/23/2007 2:44:10 PM PDT by NorthernRight
Edited on 10/23/2007 5:40:31 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
October 22, 2007
Fire officials are now stating that the Orange County Santiago fire was purposely set and there is speculation that other fires may have also been deliberate. See Interactive Map
Fire officials found three separate “points of origin,” all near the intersection of Silverado Canyon Road and Santiago Canyon Road. Two were on one side of the road, and the third was on the other. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing,” said Kris Concepcion, a fire authority battalion chief. Also, the fire traveled 3 miles in its first 20 minutes when it was ignited about 6 p.m. Sunday, he said.
We are NOT implying that the California fires are an act of terrorism however; the threat of pyro-terrorist attacks pose a significant risk to the U.S. and the fires in California and in Greece earlier this year should be a wake-up call.
In 2003 an FBI memo alerted law enforcement agencies that an al-Qaeda terrorist being held in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States.
It was reported that the detainee, who was not identified, said the plan involved three or four people setting wildfires using timed devices in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming that would detonate in forests and grasslands after the operatives had left the country.
“The detainee believed that significant damage to the U.S. economy would result and once it was realized that the fires were terrorist acts, U.S. citizens would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies,” the memo said.
How Can So Many Fires Be By Natural Causes ?
A Local News Radio talk show host in San Diego asked, “how can so many fires, in so many places, in such a short period of time, all be caused by natural causes”.
From USA Today in July of 2003
USA Today/Gannett publication article removed.
al-Qaeda Detainee Spoke of Fire Plot
As we have stated before. If you see anything suspicious, report it to law enforcement immediately.
UPDATE: Video - Officials say arson now suspected in Orange County Fire
UPDATE: From Los Angeles Fox News
“I’m sad to report this is an arson fire,” OCFA Chief Chip Prather announced at an early morning briefing. “There were three separate starts: two on one side of the road and one on the other, and obviously we are actively investigating that.”
Links - A number of blogs and websites have sprung up to report on the fires. We will provide links to a couple we’ve found.
National Interagency Fire Center
Live Local News Coverage Channel 10 San Diego
Written by News Admin · Filed Under Incident Reports
My bad, that reply was meant for SootyFoot2
Hubby and I both said almost at the same time. maybe it is terrorists.
They’re called the Santa Ana winds, nicknamed “murder winds”.
Anyone who is so naive to think that this is not part of an Islamic offensive should be interested in a bridge in Brooklyn...
I can almost guarantee that it is.
The fires in Greece were all deliberately set. Many theories abounded but no one has as fas as I know been indicted.
I have been following the news from the inside as well as the media sources...the government is keeping a tight leash and a virtual blacakout on the suspects that were rounded up.
Heard anything Kolokotronis?
The homes will be rebuilt with more fire resistant materials.
I'm not disputing that this isn't a catastrophe of biblical proportions. It's just that this real estate is just as valuable as it was last week.
Is it the nothing-can-be-done crowd’s assumption that the fellows who run armies of the ‘undocumented’ from Mexico into America are just kindhearted human smugglers who’d have nothing to do with jihad even if the price was right?
— Mark Steyn
Yes, Harry Reid has already declared that this is the result of global warming. I guess he said that before the arson evidence was discovered.
But...this has probably already been ruled IT'S NOT AN ACT OF TERRORISM.
Yeah, okay. They already have someone in custody for arson, and know of at least another arsonist-committed fire....
A smart move in relocating the aircraft.
“Heard anything Kolokotronis?”
Nothing that I think is real reliable but I will say that there is talk of terrorism around the courts in Athens. Who the terrorists are no one seems to know and that part of the world is full of terrorists with causes. The common denominator, if not the motivation, is usually Mohammedanism, but not always by any means.
here is the story I just sent you. I got it in email. It was up here at FR!
It’s entirely possible that it is some kind of terrorism. It could be just about anything.
BTW - didn’t Fox say there is a new Al Qeada tape today?
My son’s best friend is stationed at Mirimar.
Cindie
My first thought.
Second was the people responsible- but we'll all be assured that it's NOT terrorism.
There was a good long comprehensive Sacramento Bee article several years ago specifically about Western wildfires and firefighter arson, which unfortunately I can't find at the moment.
There's this from a South Carolina site in 1996:
FIREFIGHTER ARSON: LOCAL ALARM
...But when the headlines scream “Fireman Arrested for Arson,” it gets downright personal. The South Carolina Forestry Commission began looking closely at this phenomenon in 1993. By the end of the year, the tally of confirmed arrests was truly alarming—at least 33 fire department volunteers had been charged with arson. In 1994, 47 more were arrested. Forestry Commission and South Carolina Fire Service officials alike were astounded at the extent of the problem. “We knew it happened occasionally,” said Miles Knight, fire chief of the Forestry Commission, “but we were surprised by numbers like this.” Is this something relatively new, perhaps related to the popularity of “real-life emergency” television programming? Or is it a long standing problem, the magnitude of which had eluded the scrutiny of fire management professionals? Maybe these cases just didn’t stand out among the thousands of other arson incidents, and maybe sensitivity to the embarrassment of involved departments clouded our vision. We may never know for certain because most law enforcement records don’t routinely differentiate between arsonists who are firefighters and those who are not. Without comprehensive information, the natural tendency is to view each case as an isolated incident. This may be the case in other southern states as well. Most forestry agencies in the south acknowledge that firefighter arson does occur to some extent. The Alabama Forestry Commission says they investigated five or six cases in 1993; Arkansas has had five or six cases over the past few years; Kentucky has a “significant problem” with individuals setting fires so they can be hired to put them out; and Louisiana notes that wildland firefighters sometimes set fires to gain overtime pay. Some state law enforcement agencies in the south can tell you how many cases of firefighter arson they have prosecuted, but we found no single source of information in any of the states we polled. The situation is much the same with national fire agencies—nobody seems to know, and at least one major national fire agency denied having any knowledge of firefighter arson whatsoever.
Homeland Security has a 57 page report on the Problem of Firefighter Arson:
Firefighter Arson
Here's an article about the same problem in Australian wildfires:
Smoke screen
This is just from the first page of google hits.
Only a microscopic fraction of firefighters are arsonists, of course, and most arsonists aren't firefighters. It's shocking that the number of firefighter arsonists are so high, and it's interesting psychologically.
I have no evidence any of the current Southern California arsons are firefighter arsons, but nobody has any evidence it's Muslim terrorists. The ratio of the number of previous wildfires in the US known to be caused by firefighters to the number known to be caused by Muslim terrorists, is, however, infinity at the moment.
“Fire officials found three separate “points of origin,” all near the intersection of Silverado Canyon Road and Santiago Canyon Road. Two were on one side of the road, and the third was on the other. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing,”’
Very scarry.
It’s up to 1,300 last I saw on the news.
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