Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

This paper describes an analysis of residential1 arson fires in Norway in 1996 and 1997. The police have categorized 417 residential fires as arson for these two years. The case documents of 371 or 90 % of these fires have been examined and analyzed thoroughly with respect to finding characteristic features of these fires as well as the leading motives of the fire setters. These case documents have been examined in order to record such data of residential arson fires as for example: The time of the fire (hour, day of the week, month), type of building, location of the fire (city, town, village, countryside), age and sex of the arsonist, whether the arsonist was intoxicated or not, arson indicators (multiple fires, accelerants, trailers, unusual fuel load etc), fire losses (property fire losses, deaths and injuries), the motive for arson, whether the case resulted in conviction or whether the case was dropped. The paper presents the results with respect to typical characteristics and features of residential arson fires in Norway for these two years. However, there is nothing that indicates that these two years are not typical.