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Young fire setters learn to handle stress Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Debi Bisbee of the Medford Fire Department teaches fire safety and prevention at the Jackson County Juvenile Correction Facility. Her students are referred to the juvenile fire-setters class by the courts or their parents. The class also focuses on better ways to relieve stress than through violence or fire-setting. Program focuses on finding ways to avoid conflict By DANI DODGE Silence descends like an enveloping thick smoke as the 10 young people concentrate on their slow, sustained breathing. The pencils that were being twirled go still. The squirming stops. The smirks disappear. And when they reopen their eyes a few minutes later, the room is considerably calmer than it was before. What to do Steps to take if your child is caught playing with fire: Collect all matches and lighters and lock them up. Set firm rules that children are not to possess or use matches and lighters, or to light candles, without supervision. If you smoke, keep your lighter with you at all times and use only a child-resistant lighter. Give permission to your children to tell an adult if they see a child playing with fire. Keep gasoline, solvents, lighter or barbecue fluids in locked cabinets. Install smoke alarms in your child's bedroom, closet, hallway and common living areas. Keep young children from watching TV or videos with fire themes. Increase supervision. Contact your local fire department, or Debi Bisbee at 774-2315, or call 800-454-6125. It's one of a number of strategies the kids are learning to deal with stress. In the past, all of them at least once had a much poorer technique to alleviate stress. They set fires. The extreme danger of juvenile fire-setting was again demonstrated several weeks ago when a 4-year-old Central Point boy's fire play critically burned his mother and killed his 6-month-old brother. Like most children and teens who set fires, that 4-year-old was referred to the county's fire-setter program - the most comprehensive juvenile fire-setter program in the state. Because of that boy's youth, the seriousness of the fire, and the emotional fallout he will have to deal with, the boy was not put into the group program. Instead, he was referred to counseling at the Children's Advocacy Center, said Theresia O'Grady, a program manager with Community Justice who started the county's fire-setter program. "He knew what happened - his sibling wasn't around, his mother was in the hospital," O'Grady said. "That will be an issue for him the rest of his life. "He needed intensive help immediately." Most kids who have problems with fire-setting, though, go into the county's fire-setting program that began in 1993. The program has four different levels of classes, grouped by age. It accepts children as young as 2. The majority of its funding comes from an annual golf tournament sponsored by the International Association of Arson Investigators. Last year, the county also kicked in $2,000. Youths end up in the program either because they are referred by a concerned parent or because of a fire-related law violation. By the numbers Facts about fire-setting: In 1998, for the fourth straight year, youths under the age of 18 accounted for half or more of those arrested for arson in the United States. Arson fires cause an annual average of 560,000 fires, 750 deaths, 3,700 injuries and $1.5 billion in property loss. From 1994 to 1998, Jackson County had 260 youths, 12 and above, referred for reckless burning, second-degree arson and first-degree arson. In 2000, 33 students graduated from five eight-week classes organized to help youngsters learn nonviolent coping skills. In the past two years, 58 children age 9 and under have completed the "little kid" fire-setters program. None of these children have been referred to the program a second time. Motives for youth fire setting include boredom, curiosity, frustration, unresolved conflicts, anger, revenge, peer pressure, attraction to fire, concealment of crime, and an inability to deal with violence they are experiencing in their lives. "It's community service and class," explained Debi Bisbee, a Medford fire inspector, "or do time." A recent class for older kids on Monday began with the 10 kids, aged 11 to 15, turning in their homework. There was only one girl among the roomful of boys. As they filed into the classroom at the county's juvenile facility, the boys respectfully took off their baseball caps and put them on the table in front of them. During the class, Bisbee spent 20 minutes explaining to the kids what they should do if they wake up and there is smoke in their room or the smoke alarm has gone off. "First, feel the door," she said. "If the door is warm to your hand, the fire is on the other side and you should go out the window." The kids also watched a video about a horribly disfigured man who had gotten caught in his own fire as an eighth-grader. "If I knew now I would look like this ... and I wouldn't have a social life," he said. "That would have been enough to keep me away from lighting a match." The kids talked about what was lost because of the fires they had started. One boy volunteered that he'd lost his grandmother's trust. But since then, he thinks he regained it. Therapist Darwin Bjerke worked with the kids in the second hour, teaching the youths new ways to deal with stress, and handling difficult situations with a thoughtful rather than impulsive approach. The kids talked about what caused them the most stress in their day. "I had to do something with the principal," one boy admitted. "I had to talk to him. He makes me nervous." Bjerke probed and found out the reason the boy had to talk to the principal was because he slugged another kid at school. He then suggested ways he could have avoided using his fists to deal with conflict. Their homework: Analyze their stress and feelings on the day they set the fire that got them to the class. The kids must attend the classes once a week for eight weeks, and do all their homework, before they can graduate. "Of the students that graduated successfully from the class in the past two years, only one youth has been charged with a new fire allegation," O'Grady said. "That charge was reckless burning." Reach reporter Dani Dodge at 776-4471, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.