STAFFORD TOWNSHIP - The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office has charged an 18-year-old volunteer firefighter with setting a fire Aug. 13 that burned about 4 acres of forest off Long Causeway Road in Bass River Township.

 

Ryan E. Dellane, 18, of the Manahawkin section of the township, was arrested without incident at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday at the Tuckerton Barracks of the New Jersey State Police. Dellane was charged with second-degree aggravated arson and released from Ocean County Jail after posting $50,000 bail.

 

Second-degree charges carry with them potential state prison sentences of up to 10 years.

 

Ocean County Prosecutor Marlene Lynch Ford said her office would continue to investigate whether Dellane was responsible for other fires.

 

She said in a new release that Dellane's arrest was the result of an extensive investigation by the Ocean County Prosectutor's Office working with a multijurisdictional task force formed to investigate multiple woodland and structural fires in southern Ocean County since the summer of 2008.

 

Dellane is the son of Stafford Township police Lt. Thomas Dellane.

 

Staff Writer Derek Harper

Firebug and LTs. son.

 

Makes you wonder how they pieced it together. First on scene multiple times?

whats the motive?

Really? Their sons?!

whats the motive?

 

Arsonists get thrill from wildfires' power

By AMY TAXIN

The Orange County Register

Story Highlights

People who set fires sometimes stand by to watch the destruction and havoc they cause.

 

Sirens blare. Trucks roar up the road. Flames lap at barren hills, tossing embers into the night air.

 

It's a nightmare for Orange County residents fleeing the canyons with whatever they can carry. But for an arsonist, it's thrilling.

 

"Sometimes they will be nearby and they will be watching and exhilarated by the sense of havoc and fear and reactions and lights and sirens, and 'look what I can do,'" said Paul Schwartzman, a mental health counselor who works with child fire setters in Rochester, NY.

 

Psychologists and criminology experts say there's no one motivation for arson or a single profile of someone who deliberately sets a blaze like the Santiago Fire. But they unanimously agreed that people who set wildfires have been seeking out matches or lighting up leaves in the backyard since childhood - sometimes out of curiosity, more often in a cry for help.

 

Most children who are taught the dangers of fire when young and who get treatment for their problem - be it with a family member or a lack of social confidence - don't become arsonists. But adults who commit arson can usually trace back to their youth their first experience with fire.

 

Some of the most common motives for arson are personal vengeance or profit, perhaps by burning a building to collect an insurance policy. Sometimes people intentionally set fires to cover up a crime - for example, the brutal killing of a father and daughter in Anaheim Hills earlier this year.

 

But wildfires are different because the damage is dispersed and massive, yet not directed against an individual.

 

"With the wildland fire-setter, we have people who are much more angry with society in general," said Kenneth R. Fineman, a forensic psychologist in Fountain Valley. "Often times, burning something so important to people such as wildlands is a way to get back."

 

Wildfires are about power. Someone who torches open forest wants to see how much damage he or she can cause and how many resources are marshaled to the blaze. Usually, people who set wildfires are struggling with social problems or mental illness and are overcome by feelings of rage, Fineman said.

 

Most arsonists don't outwardly want to get caught - but most watch the events unfold. Sometimes arsonists, proud of their work, have videotaped their actions, donning ski-masks in what usually ends up a failed attempt to disguise their identity, said Nikos Guskos, a professor of criminal justice at Cal State Fullerton.

 

"Even though they know it's wrong, they want some remnant of what they did that they can carry with them," said Guskos, who interviewed arson suspects as a police officer. "It goes with the power."

 

Guskos said most arson suspects he's interviewed are "odd" and "antisocial" - people who want to take revenge on society for their unhappiness.

 

The Santiago Fire was not set by a young child or even a novice, experts say, but by someone who has clearly acted before. Earl Woodham, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said authorities haven't determined a motive for the fire and are still working on a myriad of leads to narrow down suspects.

 

Paul Boccumini, a retired psychologist in San Bernardino, teaches a course on the psychology and neurochemistry of fire-setters. He has some tips for how to find an arsonist and said the place to find one is right there, huddled in the crowd that gathers to watch a wildfire burn.

 

Amid the horror, some people might have their eyes wide open, almost in delight.

 

"They come back to the scene," said Boccumini, whose Lake Arrowhead home was spared by fires to the east. "They want to see and feel and hear what they have done."

 

Authorities investigating the Santiago fire are asking for the public's help in finding a truck seen in the area when the fire started.

 

The Orange County Fire Authority released a picture of a white 1998-2004 Ford F-150 on Friday, saying the agency wants to talk to the driver. The Fire Authority is not calling the driver a suspect. Investigators said the vehicle was seen around the time the fire broke out in an Orange County canyon.

 

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives dispatched 20 investigators to Orange County and then called in 15 more when leads began pouring in after agencies announced $150,000 in rewards, said Earl Woodham, an ATF spokesman.