Posted on 04/16/2013 8:09:27 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
A small town near the Mexican border is going up in flames, with more than 10 fires set over the past few months. Christine Pelisek talks to locals about the baffling whodunit.
Last November, a series of fires began to plague the small California city of Brawley. The first fire gutted a large vacant two-story office building. Soon after that, a furniture store, a woman’s gym, a historic theater, and a restaurant were set on fire. On Easter Sunday, a parking structure and a flower shop were also torched. Next came a 99-cent store, and then, last Tuesday, the A Plus Furniture on Main Street was burned to the ground.
In total, more than 10 fires have broken out in Brawley’s downtown core over the last few months, and police and fire officials are trying to determine if the pyrotechnics are the work of a serial arsonist.
Police have now increased patrol, fire trucks are stationed on Main Street, and thousands in rewards have been offered.
Last week, Brawley’s police chief called in the help of investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearm, and Explosives to help them solve the rash of fires. “We are a rural community,” said Brawley police chief Mark Gillmore. “I have 38 officers. No one is an arson specialist. We quickly became overwhelmed.”
~snip~
The fires have rattled the rural city of 27,000, which is located 30 miles from the Mexican border town of Mexicali and 70 miles west of Yuma, Arizona, and is mostly known for its Cattle Call Rodeo; as the “Gateway to the greatest adult sand box for off-highway vehicles: the Imperial Sand Dune Recreation Area”; and its close proximity to the Salton Sea, California’s largest inland lake.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
Check into any local TEA Party chapters. /s
An arsonist?
My money is on a coyote setting fires to distract the LE while he brings across illegals.
Or meth labs go BOOM.
Arrests were finally made in the string of arsons in my rural Virginia county that had started back in November - but we had almost 80 of them. Arsonists are a witch to catch.
The same problem plagued the town of Yermo, CA for years. It sounds like the arsonist moved a few hundred miles south.
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