IStock Photo 1859539 © rncotton

In the first two months of 2010, residents of the tiny town of Lindale, Texas, lost 10 of their churches in 10 separate acts of arson. Someone was breaking into sanctuaries, stacking hymnals and pews against pulpits, and lighting them on fire. The shock was palpable when, on February 21, police arrested two young men for the crimes—one a 19-year-old honor student, state debate champion, and Eagle Scout. But to officials who study arson, there was nothing unusual about the Lindale case.

From churches to strip clubs to the great outdoors, nothing is safe from an arsonist’s flame. According to the US Fire Administration, about 1 in 7.69 fires reported each year are intentionally set. Fifty-seven percent of those arsons occur in outside areas, while 1 in 4.55 occur in structures like homes, businesses, or abandoned warehouses. It all adds up to an average of 210,300 cases of intentional fires set each year—and those are only the cases that can be conclusively identified as arson. The real total is undoubtedly higher.

Arsonists are overwhelmingly male—in fact, 1 in 1.18 (85%) arrests in arson cases have police putting the handcuffs on a male suspect. Many strike repeatedly and often close to home. A college student, Anthony P. Baye, 25, has been charged with setting more than a dozen fires in a 75-minute period in Northampton, Massachusetts, in late 2009, and is a suspect in a several other suspicious fires that occurred in his neighborhood over the past several years. Tragically, one of the fires killed a man and his son.

Many arsonists are even younger. Nearly 50% of arson arrests, 1 in 2.07, are of juveniles. According to the US Department of Justice, teenaged arsonists light fires that lead to roughly 300 deaths a year.

Young people also factor heavily into the other end of a tragic equation. Eighty-five percent of the people who die in arson-induced fires are children.

While social workers and scientists strive to understand why people set fires, law enforcement officials are left to solve the crimes. And that’s a difficult task. Only 1 in 5.62 fires classified as arson results in an arrest. Fire often destroys any evidence. And finding a motive—which might lead to a suspect—is often elusive. Thrill-seeking seems to be a part of it: a 2009 torching of an abandoned Boys and Girls Club in Maine was carried out by teens who filmed their crime and posted it on YouTube. And Florida police officially announced “boredom” as the motive behind a group of teens’ St. Petersburg arson spree.

What often begins as a senseless crime against property, however, can end up with very human consequences. In 2009, CNN reported on the conviction of a California man who started a wildfire in the rural mountains outside Los Angeles in 2006. That fire began as a small blaze in dry grasses, but ended with a grisly total—41,173 acres burned, 54 buildings destroyed, 5 firefighters dead, and 1 death penalty.