COLUMN ONE : When the Firebug’s a Firefighter : Experts say these arsonists number in the hundreds nationwide and their crimes often are covered up. Some hope to become heroes by putting out the fires they set.

It read like the story line from a twisted made-for-TV movie.

The top arson investigator in Glendale, respected as one of the best in his field, had been arrested by federal agents, charged with igniting three Los Angeles-area blazes and named as a suspect in a dozen others.

Firefighters across Southern California reacted with outrage and anger. How could one of our own betray the public trust?

But the recent case of Glendale Fire Capt. John L. Orr, while exceptional in some of its details, is less unusual than many of his colleagues have suggested--or perhaps want to believe.

Orr was the third firefighter in Southern California arrested on arson charges in recent weeks, joining a Moreno Valley man charged with igniting 22 fires and a Yucaipa man accused of setting nine blazes in San Bernardino County.

The three suspected firefighter-arsonists are believed to be among hundreds nationwide driven to fire-setting by boredom, vanity, economic gain or a nagging desire to be accepted as one of the guys.

A Humboldt County fireman confessed in September to setting 10 fires, including one that destroyed a barn. A firefighter in Wareham, Mass., pleaded guilty last month to helping ignite a church, while three other firemen in the small Cape Cod town still face charges in eight blazes. In suburban Washington, D.C., firefighters were convicted last summer of setting a series of vacant houses on fire.

“It is more common than any of us would like,” said Bob Shuker, an arson investigator for the National Forest Service. “It really gets frustrating. You can’t always pick out the good guys and the bad guys just from their looks and actions.”

No official statistics are kept on firefighters gone bad, but state and federal officials believe they account for a small fraction of the 19,000 arsonists arrested each year. A decades-old study of pathological firesetters, still regarded as an authoritative source on the subject, found that 4% of those surveyed fit the description of attention-seeking firefighters.

Although there are few hard facts and there is much disagreement on the subject, some arson experts suspect the problem is far more pervasive than most authorities acknowledge because countless firefighter-ignited blazes go overlooked by fellow firefighters out of fraternal loyalty.

“It is a major problem,” said John Barracato, a former New York City deputy fire marshal who is the chief fire investigator for Aetna Life & Casualty. “A lot of it is covered up by departments because of the embarrassment. It could devastate a department if it got out.” While the numbers may be small, some officials regard the group as significant enough to warrant attention, in part because firefighters-turned-arsonists have “the propensity for serious destructiveness,” as one FBI arson expert put it. Training manuals for arson investigators alert students to the phenomenon, and in some remote jurisdictions, firefighters are routinely included among potential arson suspects.

“The first thing we do is look at our own people stationed in the area of the fire,” said Division Chief Doug Allen of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention. “We don’t just blindly do our investigations thinking a firefighter wouldn’t do that.”

Profiles of arsonists vary widely, ranging from the pyromaniac driven to set fires to the so-called “torch,” the firesetter paid to wreak devastation. But among firefighter-arsonists, say criminal psychologists and law enforcement officials, the typical characteristics are generally more narrowly defined.

The firefighter-arsonist is most often a volunteer or firefighter paid by the fire (about 80% of firefighters in the United States do not work full time for a fire department), is relatively inexperienced at putting out fires and has a strong desire to be accepted by his peers.

While full-time career firefighters--there are 200,000 of them nationwide--typically undergo background and personality screening as a condition of employment, many volunteer and so-called “paid-call” departments cannot afford to be as selective.

“With so many volunteer fire departments, it is kind of easy for somebody to get involved in firefighting without any real check on their psyche, like what is your motivation for wanting to do it?” said Kenneth R. Fineman, an Orange County clinical psychologist who has interviewed hundreds of arsonists. “There are instances where a person will be an actual arsonist and use firefighting to cover themselves.”

Psychologists and arson investigators said firefighters-turned-arsonists are most frequently motivated by ego. The firesetters typically crave the celebrity status of a firefighter extinguishing the blaze, often arriving first at the scene and going so far as to help pinpoint the blaze’s origin.

These firesetters, known as “hero” or “vanity” arsonists, have been known to arrive at the fire station in full uniform only moments after a suspicious blaze was reported. They are often volunteers who rarely get prestigious assignments, or newly hired firefighters who feel left out when their colleagues trade war stories about battling blazes gone by.

“It is the desire of every firefighter to be at the end of the hose attacking the fire,” said Thomas J. Fee, a former Pomona fire chief and president of the California Conference of Arson Investigators. “For every person at the end of the hose attacking the fire, there are three or four backing him up. Those jobs are just as important, but they don’t have the glory, especially in that person’s own mind.”

Daniel Luis Gomes, a 19-year-old member of the Loleta Volunteer Fire Department, raised suspicions among fellow Humboldt County firefighters this summer when he repeatedly showed up first at the fire station when a fire had been reported. Authorities said Gomes confessed to setting a string of fires, although he recently pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of arson.

“It was peculiar,” said Humboldt County Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Wade. “He was always dressed for the fires. He was the psychic volunteer fireman. He liked to be a fireman, to be there in the turnout gear and the whole bit.”

Public Defender Bruce Watson said Gomes had lifelong aspirations of becoming a full-time firefighter.

“He went into firefighting because he had an interest in seeing things burn,” Watson said. “His interest is being the fireman and having the self-esteem and peer group esteem of being the guy who gets the job done. It is unfortunate, because he would probably be an excellent fireman--one of the best.”

Other firefighters-turned-fire-setters are motivated by economics, either the lure of the paycheck or, in rare instances, payoffs from insurance fraud schemes, experts said.

Walter Cline Miller, a paid-call firefighter in Moreno Valley, was apparently trying to make extra money when he allegedly ignited 22 fires in Riverside County over the past several months, authorities said.

Miller was arrested Nov. 4 when he pulled into the Moreno Valley fire station after battling a blaze authorities believe he ignited. Miller, who earned about $10 an hour as a fireman, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Authorities estimate he earned $3,000 battling the fires.

“We saw him set a fire, and then he came back and did his typical thing and got in the fire truck and went and fought the fire,” said Jim Bouchard, a state arson investigator who tracked Miller for several months. “If he responded, he got paid.”

A Minneapolis newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for a series of articles alleging that the fire chief in neighboring St. Paul was linked to people who made money from arson and suspicious fires. The Star Tribune reported that a multimillion-dollar industry profiting from the blazes had evolved in St. Paul and that most of the money flowed to two companies with close ties to the chief. The chief, who denied any wrongdoing, retired in April.

Other firefighter-arsonists, psychologists and arson experts said, are seeking revenge against a fire department for some perceived injustice or are simply battling boredom.

Several years ago, for example, a 12-year veteran firefighter for the state forestry service who spent most of his time hauling supplies between fire stations was convicted of setting nearly a dozen fires, apparently ignited when he flicked matchbooks and cigarettes from the window of his fire service truck.

The motive, however, is not always clear. In the small Massachusetts town of Wareham, Fire Chief Chester B. Harubin said people are still trying to figure out why four of his best paid-call firefighters went on a yearlong firesetting binge that caused $300,000 in damages.

The four men were arrested last year after an off-duty police officer spotted one of their pickup trucks near a church that was set ablaze. One of the men had followed his father and grandfather into the firefighting service, and all of them were well regarded in the community.

Harubin continues to refer to the four as “good kids” and excellent firefighters. He suspects they simply become too enamored with fighting fires.

“Firefighters are a different breed of people,” Harubin said. “When there is a fire, there is the greatest sense of camaraderie that you can imagine. All differences are put aside to accomplish the goal. . . . There is such a feeling of good will at fires because of this sense of camaraderie that people, when there aren’t fires, they miss this.”

Fineman, the Orange County psychologist and arson expert, said it is “common-sense logic” that some firefighters are attracted to the profession because of a fascination with fire. He said professional firefighters have often indicated that as children they were curious--in some instances overly curious--about fire.

Such a fascination, Fineman said, should not necessarily be considered unhealthy, dangerous or a warning sign that a firefighter has arsonist tendencies. The vast majority of these firefighters, he said, have chosen to channel their fascination in a socially acceptable fashion.

“When provided the adult choice of setting fires and watching them or putting out fires that others set, they chose the latter,” said Fineman, an associate professor at the UC Irvine Medical School. “I say all the more power to them. People should like what they are doing. If they are getting a kick out of watching the fire, but are doing a top-notch job putting it out, that should be encouraged.”

In the case of John L. Orr, the Glendale fire investigator arrested Dec. 4 on arson charges, authorities believe he used his firesetting exploits as the basis for a manuscript about a serial arsonist who was a firefighter. Author and former Los Angeles firefighter Antony Jakubowski, who spoke with Orr about the manuscript, said the Glendale captain had hoped to sell it as a television movie.

Arson investigators and criminal psychologists said that bizarre twist as well as Orr’s seniority in the Glendale department distinguish his case from those of most firefighters-turned-arsonists. The case is also unusual in that Orr was arrested: The vast majority of arsonists from all walks of life are never apprehended, according to federal statistics.

In a letter to prospective publishers, Orr described the protagonist in his manuscript as a firefighter who has been setting fires in California for eight years.

“The arsonist not only stays close by, but sometimes even participates in the discovery and eventual extinguishment of ‘their’ fire,” he wrote. “Bizarre? Indeed it is.”