On Fire

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.7 • 38.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2021

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On November 12th, 2012, the Accomack County volunteer fire departments got a call. An abandoned house had suddenly gone up in flames. And then, just hours later, a second fire was reported. Then a third. Over the next few months, there would be a lot more fires—nearly 90 in all. It was all anyone could talk about in Accomack. Someone was burning down the entire county. Monica Hesse's book is American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this show comes from Krakan.
0:03.0	Krypto is like the financial system, but different.
0:07.0	It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score,
0:11.0	or your outrageous food delivery habits.
0:13.7	crypto is finance for everyone everywhere all the time.
0:18.4	Krakhan, see what crypto can be.
0:21.3	Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.
0:25.0	This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong.
0:31.0	This episode contains adult language.
0:33.0	Please use discretion.
0:35.0	So there is this app that you could download in 2012
0:40.0	that would broadcast police scanner activity around you.
0:45.0	And there was a period of time in late 2012 and early 2013
0:50.0	where the third busiest community where people were listening to police activity was New York
0:57.0	and the second busiest was Los Angeles and the first busiest place where people were listening to find out what crimes were happening was
1:06.2	Ackamat County, Virginia, because everybody was listening for the arsonist.
1:26.4	This is stuff that movies are made of these you know these hallmark made for TV movies. I mean it was you know we got lots of stuff people offered volunteer firefighters from Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, offered to come here and help us.
1:28.6	And we're like, nah, stay home, dude.
1:30.7	Just don't get in this mess. We had offers for fuel, equipment, and I'm stunned. I'm actually
1:37.5	stunned that out of those fires, no fire truck ever rolled over and any firefighters were hurt.
1:43.6	This is Jeff Bell.
1:45.2	In 2012 he was the fire chief of a small volunteer fire department in Tazley, Virginia.
	...

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