Setting Fires `An Ozark Tradition' for Some, Investigator Says
A split, charred tree stump is a clue that lightning was to blame for a forest fire. Carbon particles indicate the exhaust of a passing truck was the culprit. And there are other ways to tell a fire was accidental. ``You eliminate all those causes, you're down to arson,'' said Dale Smallwood, a criminal investigator for Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest. He comes down to arson in most of his investigations _ and he and other forest officials believe the problem is often rooted in some regional traditions that are as hard to quell as flames. A psychologist's study found economic and even aesthetic reasons why some people light woods aflame. Arsonists set 172 of the 296 Mark Twain fires that have broken out so far this year, burning more than 9,000 acres, Smallwood said. A total of 14,200 acres of the forest, which covers 1.5 million acres mostly in southern Missouri, were burned during a spring fire season made more volatile by drought. On average, Smallwood estimates, 70 percent of the forest fires each year in Missouri are deliberately set. ``It's probably 90 percent higher than the national average,'' said Ron McDonald, Mark Twain's fire control officer. He said Mark Twain consistently is among the five forest districts with the worst arson problem. ``It's just been an Ozark tradition of incendiary (deliberately set) fires,'' McDonald said. The tradition seems to stretch across the southern United States, according to Smallwood. Fires in other areas are more likely to be caused by lightning or man's carelessness. As one of the Forest Service's 125 special law enforcement agents, Smallwood has spent most of the past 16 years investigating fires in the forests he loves. ``I consider myself an Ozark hillbilly,'' he said. The Forest Service is charged with protecting wildlands, and balancing recreational needs with commercial interests in timber and mineral resources. Smallwood's job includes investigating marijuana growing in the forest, timber theft and theft of other federal property. His military-neat office at the Forest Service headquarters in Rolla is decorated with game bird feathers, a picture of Smokey Bear and a glass-doored bookcase lined with reports and text books. The Forest Service has called on psychologists, sociologists and archaeologists to determine why fires are set. ``Part of it is tradition,'' Smallwood said. ``In the springtime, people used to burn the woods to allow grass to grow.'' A policy of open grazing, with cattle free to feed on any unfenced land, was allowed in the Ozarks until the 1960s, longer than in other wooded areas, Smallwood said. Psychologist John P. Shea in the 1940s conducted one of the first Forest Service studies of arson. Subsistence farmers in the rural South who were interviewed by Shea and his researchers claimed fire helped control ticks, snakes and disease and controlled the encroachment of trees on land where they wanted to graze cattle. ``Their ways are those of frontiersmen living in an arrested frontier,'' Shea wrote. Aesthetics even played a part: Shea and other researchers found that people living in areas where arson was common enjoyed the smell of smoke in the spring air, and believed the woods looked better ``burned clean.'' The Forest Service has attempted to counter the lore that can lead to burning. Over the years, timber has been touted as a cash crop that is as worthy of protection as grassland. Smokey Bear and other programs encourage the view of the forests as a priceless national resource. But the tradition of using fire to manage the woods dies hard. ``There's no cut-and-dried way to prevent it,'' McDonald said. ``We had one case (in 1984) where two men went to Sunday school and after school they started a fire with their Sunday school literature,'' Smallwood said. ``They just happened to be driving through an area they thought needed to be burned out.'' Still, the arsonist does not always fit the profile of a simply misguided citizen. ``Part of the problem is people driving around drinking and shooting road signs,'' Smallwood said. ``When they get bored with that, they set fires. It's malicious mischief. ``Sometimes you hear that someone is angry at the Forest Service because of some administrative action _ because we closed a road or disallowed something. And they don't necessarily have to be mad at the Forest Service. They could be mad at government, period.'' Then, ``fire is used as retaliation.'' ``It's so senseless,'' he said. ``It just costs a lot of money to put these fires out and it's coming right out of our tax dollars.'' McDonald, who oversees about 125 Mark Twain employees trained as firefighters, said forest fires cost $25 to $30 an acre to suppress. In the rare case of a conviction, the arsonist is likely to be put on probation or ordered to pay the costs of fighting the fire and replacing timber that was destroyed, Smallwood said. Last year, a judge ordered two arsonists to work weekends for the Forest Service. ``An arson case in the forest is very hard to make,'' he said. ``When you go out in the middle of the forest to a blackened area to begin an investigation, it's very difficult and frustrating. No. 1, you usually don't have any witnesses.'' He noted that in some cases, people who have evidence withhold it for fear of being burned out themselves. Beyond the cost in dollars of forest fires, there's risk to those who fight them. ``We had an employee die of a heart attack fighting an arson fire,'' Smallwood said, referring to a 1976 blaze. ``We would have liked to have prosecuted someone in that case. And I would have also liked to have known if the prosecutor would have considered a manslaughter charge against the arsonist.''
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