They set fires to bone up on their training, or to preemptively eliminate hazardous buildings; they are, in the words of fire scholar Matt Hinds-Aldrich, “occupationally overzealous.” “We found that a lot of these young men didn’t have an awful lot in their lives to distinguish them except for their association with the fire service,” said Ken Cabe, who studied firefighter arsonists for the South Carolina State Forestry Commission. “They were highly motivated, they were highly trained and maybe the alarm didn’t go off often enough for them.”
In other words, a firefighter who sets fires may not be some entirely separate and deviant kind of person, but rather a good guy who goes to extremes. And firefighting, with its long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme danger, inspires extremes.
