oxydolfan1
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2006
- Messages
- 1,764
"It's amazing how many nutcases go out and start more fires when a fire makes the news."
Firestarters are deeply rooted in some serious pathology. My sister was a host home provider for homeless and emotionally disturbed kids for several years, and one theme she found repeatedly in a frighteningly large percentage of them was the propensity to start fires.
Today I was thinking about Arverne and Edgemere, two seaside communities in Far Rockaway, New York, that my parents would drive us through during the late sixties (I am sure native Noo Yawkers toggles, shane, and ross will remember).
It was an old resort area with hundreds of blocks of abandoned wooden bungalows and Queen Anne mansions. The City designated much of it a slum clearance area and, in their infinite wisdom, chose to warehouse large numbers of psychiatric patients, many of whom were sexual predators or had serious past histories of abuse, in institutions or out.
Many of them would hang out, wander about unchallenged, and set fire to these old structures. It was said that some of the arsonists set these fires to facilitate orgasm; others did it simply for kicks, and held impromptu contests on whose bungalow would burn brighter.
Urban legend held that incoming pilots on approach to JFK Airport would home in on a Rockaway fire. As the years went by, I remembered watching, during our infrequent drives through the communities, what was left vanish into burnt wrecks and piles of sand.
It was sort of a precursor to the more obvious fires that later plagued neighborhoods closer to our own, in the Bronx and Brooklyn. These were far more deadly, and equally senseless, but there, greedy landlords and tenants desperate for priority placements on the housing lists, but the Rockaway fires stand out in my memory because they were set for ENTERTAINMENT value.
When you are a kid and you hear your elders discuss such things and see the aftermath for yourself....well, what a weird intro to human nature!
It's a pretty apocalyptic regression to what is happening in California, knowing at least some of these fires, in so many separate locations, surely have to have been not only deliberately set, but by more than one arsonist.
On the radio, they are speculating that at least one of the fires may have been caused by some sort of beetle.
Firestarters are deeply rooted in some serious pathology. My sister was a host home provider for homeless and emotionally disturbed kids for several years, and one theme she found repeatedly in a frighteningly large percentage of them was the propensity to start fires.
Today I was thinking about Arverne and Edgemere, two seaside communities in Far Rockaway, New York, that my parents would drive us through during the late sixties (I am sure native Noo Yawkers toggles, shane, and ross will remember).
It was an old resort area with hundreds of blocks of abandoned wooden bungalows and Queen Anne mansions. The City designated much of it a slum clearance area and, in their infinite wisdom, chose to warehouse large numbers of psychiatric patients, many of whom were sexual predators or had serious past histories of abuse, in institutions or out.
Many of them would hang out, wander about unchallenged, and set fire to these old structures. It was said that some of the arsonists set these fires to facilitate orgasm; others did it simply for kicks, and held impromptu contests on whose bungalow would burn brighter.
Urban legend held that incoming pilots on approach to JFK Airport would home in on a Rockaway fire. As the years went by, I remembered watching, during our infrequent drives through the communities, what was left vanish into burnt wrecks and piles of sand.
It was sort of a precursor to the more obvious fires that later plagued neighborhoods closer to our own, in the Bronx and Brooklyn. These were far more deadly, and equally senseless, but there, greedy landlords and tenants desperate for priority placements on the housing lists, but the Rockaway fires stand out in my memory because they were set for ENTERTAINMENT value.
When you are a kid and you hear your elders discuss such things and see the aftermath for yourself....well, what a weird intro to human nature!
It's a pretty apocalyptic regression to what is happening in California, knowing at least some of these fires, in so many separate locations, surely have to have been not only deliberately set, but by more than one arsonist.
On the radio, they are speculating that at least one of the fires may have been caused by some sort of beetle.
