Bored Teen Renders Five Families Homeless

My current station is in the middle of nowhere, at the north end of the county. We don't run many calls (hence the infrequent updating here, sorry!) The south end of our county stays very steady and runs most of the fires we get here. Surely enough, tones dropped for a fire on the south end. First arriving units stated the rear of a row of townhouses was burning, and that five units were involved. Each unit was assigned it's own team of firefighters to work on it, and a second alarm was dropped. Before I knew it, my station was being called to assist on a fire twenty miles to the south! Excitedly, I hurried to the truck. I tried not to get my hopes up too much, telling myself "they'll have it all out and cancel us before we even get halfway there" but that wasn't the case. We made it to the scene and were assigned a unit. The incident commander explained that a 15 year old stated he had accidentally burned a pizza and thrown it in the backyard, but that it caught the grass and a grille, then the siding and walls on fire before he could get water on it. It was a dry windy day so nobody doubted it. The commander said our unit still had fire extension in the walls, and in between the floors, and it was up to us to find it and put it out. I happily connected my air pack to my BA and, pike pole in hand, entered the residence.

The carpet was floating a foot off the floor from all the water inside the home. It squished when we stepped on it. We went to the rear of the home and communicated with crews on the outside to get their perspective, before tearing into the walls and ceiling. Opening the ceiling, we saw the rolling orange glow of spreading fire. Opening the nozzle we quickly extinguished it, and moved further along the ceiling of the kitchen. We pulled more and more sheet rock wall and ceiling, checking for extension. We went upstairs and opened a bedroom wall where the outside crews said there was fire. Sure enough, under a windowsill, was more fire spreading in the void space of the wall. Visibility was good, windows were open, and the fire was contained and moving slowly. We had to keep opening wall, spraying water, moving a foot, and repeating. Eventually we felt confident that the fire was out. At least in that wall. We had to check the roof. My partner easily had 120 pounds and at least eight inches in height on me, so I had to climb up into the tight opening of the attic. With my air pack on, it took some contorting and twisting, but I was able to get up into the space and make sure there was no fire up there. I turned my flashlight off, looking for anything glowing. I listened for the crackle. I used the thermal image camera to make sure there were no more hot spots. My straps got hung up a few times trying to come down out of the attic, but I freed myself and we exited the home, confident that we had put a stop to it in out unit. There were other teams accomplishing the same thing in their units, and just like that the fun was over. After we finished all the cleanup, the investigator spoke with the young man and his story changed. It came out that he was bored, and had poured mineral spirits over action figures before setting them ablaze and he got more than he bargained for.