Who Is Setting Fire to Coatesville?

[Tab]

Source: Time

John Pawlowski has lived in the small city of Coatesville, Pa., all his life, and he's never seen anything like this: neighbors so afraid they're threatening violence against strangers. "I heard from one guy who said, 'If I see someone who I don't know walking in my backyard, they're going to have to carry him out,' " says Pawlowski, 75, a retired newspaper worker. "And he said that with malice in his voice."

Since New Year's Day, Coatesville has seen 14 arsons, including one on Saturday night that destroyed 15 row houses on Fleetwood Street, leaving up to 60 people, including a city-council member, homeless. There has been nearly $2 million in damage done. The city, an aging steel town of about 12,000 an hour west of Philadelphia, usually records about two arsons per year, according to the police. But last year there were 15 reported arsons, including one in October that killed an 83-year-old woman. One man was arrested in connection with that fire, and two others were charged with other fires around the same time, but police told reporters they have no suspects in the latest wave of blazes. (See the top 10 crime stories of 2008.)

"People are scared," Pawlowski says. "They are almost desperate." Angry residents showed up at city hall on Sunday at a long-scheduled meeting to discuss re-establishing a Town Watch program and demanded answers from city officials. According to local newspapers, at least 100 people packed the meeting, causing the police chief, city manager and city-council members to hurry over to deal with the crowd. Police chief William Matthews tried to reassure the residents. "We cannot have people roaming the streets with guns," he said, according to the Daily Times newspaper.
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City-council president Marty Eggleston says officials are trying to simultaneously reassure residents and urge them to be vigilant without resorting to vigilantism. "This is a situation no one has prepared themselves for. No one would expect that we would have individuals who would go out and covertly terrorize this community," he told TIME on Monday, several hours before a packed city-council meeting that addressed the crisis. "We can protect ourselves by not giving these 'opportunists' an opportunity to do things to us," he said. "For example, we talked about turning your porch light on at night to light up the neighborhoods, removing any kind of unnecessary debris from the outside of the residence, front and back. Just the tiny things." He says he is "prayerful" that residents will follow through on plans to create a peaceful Town Watch. At Monday's meeting, the council approved the purchase of motion-activated lights, which the city will sell to residents at a discount to help illuminate dark yards that might invite arsonists.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090127/us_time/08599187426100

[Eurobabe]

1. maybe it's for insurance claims?

House is worth less than it's worth? Coatesville is a sad place. I used to live about 30 minutes from there.

[Tab]

2. Um, but 15 homes?

If one person owned them all, it'd be obvious. Otherwise, it seems like a hard sell....

[woodsprite]

3. I was thinking more likely someone who wants to buy the property. n/t

[Eurobabe]

4. there's been some weird stuff happening in that part of PA

for awhile. A huge eminent domain fight over a farm & golf course last year, year before?

[bbernardini]

5. Indeed. That was the only time I've ever voted for a Republican.

The farm was in an adjoining township, not even in the city of Coatesville. The city council seemed convinced that seizing this farm and building a golf course there would help revitalize the city, even though people who would use the golf course would just get off the bypass, go to the golf course, get back on the bypass to go home, and never actually get near downtown Coatesville. (The idea being that after golfing, they would come to town to eat and shop.) Never mind the fact that there isn't even a grocery store in town for people to go to, and that drug-related crime is rampant. Just build a golf course nowhere near the downtown, and everything will fix itself!

So, I voted for the only choice I had that was against this folly. He happened to be a Republican. They may have this arson problem, but they also realize that the key to revitalization is bringing new shopping, housing and a grocery store to the downtown area.

There are rumors that the fires are somehow connected to the revitalization efforts. I don't know if it's supposed to discourage the revitalization, or clear a path to seize the land to use for revitalization.

[happyslug]

6. Could it be just the homeless? i.e. Homeless fires that got to big.

I am sorry, no connection, Arson? Arson can include someone who started a fire inside an abandoned building to keep warm, and then for some reason the fire got out of control. At that point the homeless person who started the fire would have left, and you have a fire.

My point is it has been BELOW Freezing since mid December in most of PA (One or two days above but most at or below freezing). Homeless people have to leave someplace, and in cold weather they want to be warm and the only way they can have heat is to start a fire, building whatever wood or other burnable material they can find (Rags, Papers, cardboard etc). I can see such a fire built inside a wood frame building getting out of control. This should be called an accident, but since the person who set the fire left the scene it is called Arson.