SYDNEY, Australia -- A former volunteer fireman in Australia was found guilty Tuesday in the deaths of 10 people in an arson timed to make the most of bushfire conditions described at the time as "catastrophic."
The blaze set by Brendan Sokaluk, 42, on what has become known as Black Saturday in February 2009 also destroyed 150 homes and burned 36,000 hectares of land in the high country north of Melbourne.
During the month-long trial in Melbourne, police said Sokaluk, whose car broke down near where the blaze started, laid two fires that ravaged the village of Churchill.
"When the accused man arrives at that intersection, there's no fire," prosecutor Ray Elston told the court. "No one else is suggested to be present. When he leaves, it's ablaze."
Sokaluk faces 25 years in jail on each of the 10 counts of arson causing death when he is sentenced next month after a jury found him guilty.
The fires from the Sokaluk case were among as many as 400 that burned on Black Saturday. In total, the fires claimed 173 lives, destroyed 2,000 properties and blackened 450,000 hectares.
They broke out when the ground was tinder-dry, the temperature above 40 degrees and a 70-kilometre-per-hour wind was blowing.
The fire service obliges candidates to undergo psychological testing to try to weed out firebugs, but it is an imprecise science.
"They're not psychiatrically sick at all," institute criminologist Paul Wilson has said. "It's a myth to say most bushfire starters are pyromaniacs. They have a grudge against a person or a situation, such as a girlfriend that left them or an employer, and they take out their anger and revenge by lighting fires."
The Australian Institute of Criminology estimated half of forest fires are deliberately lit, the rest being from lightning strikes or accidental ignitions from cigarettes or machinery.
Arson attacks on hot days when the wind is blowing strongly can be the perfect crime. Prosecutions are difficult because any evidence is consumed by the flames and there are seldom co-offenders to blab about the crime.
There is no obvious motive and no obvious gain.
In South Australia, there is legislation allowing police to check up on known or suspected arsonists on days of great fire danger.
Police visit their homes and warn them that closed-circuit television cameras at the entrance to national parks are programmed to snap shots if their car licence plate numbers are detected. The initiative has cut arson attacks by a third.
Copyright 2012 - dpa, Berlin
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
