I haven’t been following this closely, though it’s not very far away from my home. What I haven’t seen is information about the mortgage status or owner vs renter occupancy status of these homes. Some may be being burned down with the consent of the “owner”, who either lives there and has an underwater mortgage that’s about to get foreclosed, or is a landlord who hasn’t been receiving rent for a while and can’t keep paying the mortgage and insurance without rental income. The chief reason I suspect this is that with so many houses getting burned over such a long period of time, the “no snitching” forces in the town certainly know who’s doing it by now, and have elected not to eliminate the responsible party or parties. The no-snitchers generally prefer to handle this sort of problem themselves, and they do it a heck of a lot faster and cheaper than our absurd “justice” system. The arsonists are clearly not doing anything the no-snitchers disapprove of.
While I was looking up these fires, I came across the information that they are mostly rentals. They mentioned that because most of the residents did not have renters’ insurance, while the buildings were insured. This reminds me of what used to happen in Atlantic City before gambling. They used to say that Atlantic City had three seasons, winter, summer tourist and fire. They used to call it Jewish lightning because most of the owners were Jewish.
We once lived in Chadds Ford. What a contrast there is between the east side of Chester county and the rest of the county.