By Jim Schultz
The Redding Record Searchlight
ANDERSON, Calif. — With studies showing that more than 50 percent of all fires nationally are started by those under the age of 18, a group of Shasta County children, their parents and guardians took part Thursday in a program that’s designed to fight — and hopefully prevent — youth-caused fires.
Intervention and education are the keys.
It’s estimated about 85 percent of those children starting fires will continue to repeat their dangerous behavior if left untreated.
“The sooner you intervene in fire play, the better,” said California Chief Fire Marshal Tonya Hoover, who attended Thursday evening’s Youth Fire-Setter Prevention and Intervention Academy program at the Anderson New Technology High School.
Also attending Thursday’s twice-a-year program along with about 25 volunteers, primarily with fire-fighting careers, was a convicted arsonist who shared his story in hopes the children do not follow the same path he took that led him to a 13-year prison sentence.
With 36 children separated in three classrooms based on their ages, Darren Stewart, a captain with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and other instructors didn’t mollycoddle their students as they tried to teach them that it’s extremely dangerous to play with fire.
The children learned fire can have devastating and life-changing consequences in only a few split seconds.
The youths, who must complete homework and complete workbooks, opened sealed envelopes containing photographs that clearly show what kind of terrible damage can be caused by fires, including before and after photos of a young girl about their age who suffered burns in a fire.
“That could be your sister, a friend at school,” Stewart said.
But the most important photo they saw was one of a group of happy and smiling children with the message: “Your life matters.”
“You are important to your family,” Stewart said. “You are important to us. You guys are very important to the cause.”
Meanwhile, the parents and guardians of the children attended a separate classroom to learn what they can do.
Founded in 2014 in response to a troubling rise in the number of youth-caused fires in Shasta County, the YFPI, in partnership with the Shasta Arson Task Force, is a program administered by the nonprofit Shasta County Youth Violence Prevention Council.
Jas Shaw, Shasta County Peer Court coordinator and a youth fire prevention specialist, said the program since its inception has identified and screened 60 children, some as young as 5 years old, for future fire risk behavior.
Of those, 95 percent were classified as being curious about fire and who needed educational intervention.
Four percent were classified as troubled and needing education and mental health help, while 1 percent was classified as pathological and needing immediate mental health services.
Shaw said most of the children who set fires in Shasta County do so because they are curious. They experiment with fire while thinking they can control the flames, she said.
But, she said, that’s a risky behavior, especially in Shasta County with its dry summers and ready-to-burn forests and wildlands.
“There’s a lot at stake,” she said.
Shaw founded the program with Cal Fire Battalion Chief J.T. Zulliger and Patrick O’Connor, a Redding Fire Department fire inspector and Youth Violence Prevention Council board member. They have received volunteer help from a variety of fire-fighting agencies and others, including law enforcement and court-based offices, such as juvenile probation and the district attorney’s office, to try to make it succeed.
And that fact was not lost on Hoover.
“It really is a model program,” Hoover said, adding she hopes it will spread throughout the state.
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