Female arsonists are different than male arsonists

[MillCreek]

https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/aapl/75943

This was interesting. Back when I was in the fire/EMS service, I went to some lectures about arson. Back then, the consensus was the majority of arsons (not done for insurance fraud) were either due to sexual pathology or the arsonist was a firefighter who wanted excitement and being hailed as a hero.  Much like the concept of hospital nurses giving meds to patients to make them code, so the nurse could discover them, call the code and be a hero.

Only a small number of studies looking at female arsonists, but then again the number of female, as opposed to male, arsonists is pretty small as well.

[brimic]

https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/aapl/75943

Back then, the consensus was the majority of arsons (not done for insurance fraud) were either due to sexual pathology or the arsonist was a firefighter who wanted excitement and being hailed as a hero. 

*Thread drift*
This is exactly what happened in my hometown as a kid, a firefighter started a fire at the high school late one night.
He was caught.
He was forever referred to as 'Sparky' around time.

[just Warren]

Very tangential observation:

I read the article and didn't see anything in there about arson-for-gain.

If there's fraud involved wouldn't the ratio be closer to 1-1?

Did they remove those folks from the study, or not even think to look for them, because the motivation was money rather than some emotional thing?

[LadySmith]

The females I knew who set fires always did it out of anger and vengeance.
That significant other who cheated during his midlife crisis got his little red Corvette torched by the missus.
That mean drunk who hit his old lady one too many times before passing out woke up in a hospital's burn unit.
Stuff like that.

[KD5NRH]

So, what triggers the other 3,794 genders to burn?

[Boomhauer]

*Thread drift*
This is exactly what happened in my hometown as a kid, a firefighter started a fire at the high school late one night.
He was caught.
He was forever referred to as 'Sparky' around time.

My old fire chief worked for the NC Office of Insurance in their fire devision. He told us of one case where a volunteer firefighter was setting fires for this reason. He was pretty good at covering his tracks and was only caught because one fire he set was toned out and the wrong address was given by the dispatcher...it was awfully suspicious when he arrived and checked in. IIRC he had waited a reasonable amount of time then called in on the radio and called onscene at the right address and that’s when they knew 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[griz]

He told us of one case where a volunteer firefighter was setting fires for this reason. He was pretty good at covering his tracks and was only caught because one fire he set was toned out and the wrong address was given by the dispatcher...it was awfully suspicious when he arrived and checked in.

I saw a TV show on that guy.  He was in California and mostly set brush fires, but burned several buildings too, including one where somebody died.  He fancied himself an author and wrote a book where the protagonist was an arsonist and used the same methods the author was using.  They said after he was caught that the number of wildfires in California went down to about 20 percent of what they were when he was setting them.