Police Claim Fire Lit By Youth

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29724, 18 January 1962, Page 13

Police Claim Fire Lit By Youth

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) MELBOURNE, January 17. The main blaze in the Dandenong Ranges, 25 miles from Melbourne, spread from a fire deliberately started by a youth who wanted to put it out again to impress people with his fire-fighting ability, police claimed today.

The big fire spread from one started on Sunday at the Basin, police said. A 16-year-old has been questioned by Detective Puls, of Femtree Gully, and has been told he will be charged on summons. Police say they are examining all aspects of the fire before preparing a charge against the youth. Police allege he planned to put out the fire, but it got out of his control and swept into the hills. Fire investigations have been led by Detective-In-spector H. Parker. Detective-Inspector Parker said today there would be a prosecution over a fire at Lancefield, 46 miles from Melbourne on Sunday, which did not spread very far. He said a 19-year-old youth would be summonsed and would appear at Lancefield. Detective - Inspector Parker said it was alleged that the fire was started by efforts to smoke a ferret from a rabbit burrow. He said police had two suspects for the Healesville fire and three for the Christmas Hill blaze. These suspects were all Sunday rabbiters. Three persons, including an elderly man and his son. were each sentenced to gaol on charges of having lit fires yesterday on a day of acute fire danger. At Ballarat, about 70 miles east of Melbourne, the man. aged 73, and his son, 28, were (sentenced to six months’ gaol. They are John Webb

and Garnet John Webb, both unemployed, of Ballarat. Constable Roy Wilson said he went to a fire last night near Villa Maria Convent. Ballarat East, and saw the two men hurrying away. Two food tins, which they admitted having used, were found in the fire, he said. Detective L. D. Frichot said the younger Webb admitted that he and his father went to Villa Maria to beg their tea, and later sat by the road smoking. He said he did not remember what they did with their matches. Detective Frichot said the fire burned several posts along the roadside and spread into a paddock before being controlled.

The younger Webb was also sentenced to one month’s gaol and his father to two weeks' gaol on charges of being drunk and disorderly. In Glenroy Court, Melbourne, an unemployed man was sentenced to gaol for a month for having lit a fire yesterday—a day of proclaimed acute fire danger. Constable C. J. O’Toole, told the Magistrate that Leslie John O’Keefe, aged 42, of no fixed address, had been found boiling his billy with a fire, near a heavily-tim-bered property. The Magistrate told O’Keefe that he would not take into account that the fact that half the State was in flames at the time. He said that a person who lit a fire on a day of acute fire danger should know better.