The Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department was awarded a federal grant of $20,403 on Friday that will help combat arson in the county.
The grant will provide equipment for a mobile arson investigation unit, a vehicle that accompanies firefighters to the scene and helps identify the cause of the fire. The equipment in the vehicle will preserve and maintain evidence found at fires. This mobile crime lab will help investigators rapidly determine if a fire’s cause is arson, and aid them in tracking down arsonists.
Maryland has received almost $22 million in funding from the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program since 2001, when the program became active. The money is usually used for training and purchasing new equipment for firefighters.
However, this is only the third grant the county fire department has received in the past five years, said Mark Brady, the chief spokesman for the department. Most of the grants have instead been awarded to the 37 volunteer firehouses in the county, he said.
The volunteer firehouses are owned by private corporations but are supported through the county budget and often receive federal grants through this program.
“We have submitted as many as a dozen grant requests a year,” Brady said. “We’re fortunate to have received one.”
Brady said arson has been a significant problem in College Park in the past few years, citing the fires at Lasick’s Beef and Seafood and the Best Western Hotel, both on Nov. 30. Firefighters have determined both fires to be arson cases, but do not have any suspects.
These isolated cases, however, are not the end of the arson problem. A serial arsonist, who first struck in March 2003, has set fires in every jurisdiction within the Washington metropolitan area since that date. Brady said there have been about 45 fires attributed to the arsonist, but none within the past six months.
No major advances in the case have been made recently, but Brady said investigators continue to follow new leads and depend on the help of the public. There are several rewards available for information leading to the capture of the serial arsonist, now as high as $100,000.
Brady said the grant may help track down the serial arsonist, but was not specifically targeted at that cause. Rather, the money will be used to help curb the problem of arson in general around the county.
“Our fire investigators’ ability to solve crimes of arson will certainly be enhanced with the addition of this equipment. This funding ultimately allows the Fire/EMS Department to provide the best possible service to the citizens and residents of Prince George’s County,” County Fire Chief Lawrence Sedgwick said in a press release on April 22.
