Why do the Australian police suspect that arson is the cause of the Victoria bushfires?

Answer 1

Because they always expect a blamable force to be behind everything. It can never just be an act of human nature.

Police and fire-fighters are authorities and professionals in their field. Firefighters, in particular, know and understand fires. They know how a fire behaves and what influences its ferocity, and they can "read" its behaviour. In the case of the devastating 2009 Victorian bushfires, the force and speed of these particular fires have been unnatural. The fires have not behaved like lightning fires or those resulting from natural forces.

Fire criminologists and investigators have confirmed that many of these fires are the result of arson. According to news.com.au reports, the current task force is headed by Crime Department Assistant Commissioner Dannye Moloney who was involved in similar investigations during the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires.

Statistically speaking, 13% of bushfires in Australia are known to be deliberately lit each year, and another 37% are regarded as suspicious in origin. Therefore it stands to reason that, if around 50% of Australian bushfires are deliberately lit each year, there is a good chance that the devastating bushfires in Victoria in February 2009 were also the result of arson.

Findings from the coronial inquest handed down a year later placed most of the blame for the Kinglake fire on faulty power lines.