TillerScreen
A risk-management dashboard for fire chiefs of volunteer and small combination departments that flags new members whose profile matches the documented arsonist pattern and tracks the early-warning signs.
fire chiefs and training officers of volunteer and small combination fire departments with no HR department
- volunteer application reviewer that scores risk against the published arsonist profile (recent join, age, prior complaints, training gaps)
- an anonymous tip line that auto-correlates incoming reports with previously-flagged members and stations
- incident correlation across nearby departments so a pattern in one town surfaces in another within weeks
- a quarterly 'training and recognition' reminder so chiefs can intervene before boredom sets in, which the article names as a trigger
Roughly 100 firefighter arsonists are convicted in North America every year, all of them serial; records don't differentiate firefighters from other arsonists so the problem is invisible until a town makes the news — a tool that surfaces the pattern across departments would be the first of its kind.
Wikipedia/NVFC confirm ~100 US firefighter arson convictions/yr is a real but rare phenomenon; Hacker News thread was only 30 points, and fire chiefs of small volunteer departments are not visibly searching for screening software — demand exists but is latent and unsearched.Firefighter arson - Wikipedia ↗NVFC Arson Report ↗
No dedicated software product exists for this; competitors like ImageTrend, Active911, ESO, and Ember Fire focus on dispatch/EMS/HR operations, not arson-pattern member screening. NVFC's 'Toolkit' is a PDF, not software — market is genuinely open.Active911 vs ImageTrend Comparison ↗What We Do - Ember Fire ↗
Volunteer and small combination departments are notoriously cash-strapped, and a screening tool used only at onboarding has thin unit economics; existing fire-software buyers do pay (Active911 pricing exists), but willingness to pay for a narrow, infrequent-use arson screen is unproven.Pricing - Active911 ↗Top 10 Best Volunteer Fire Department Software ↗
The firefighter arson pattern has been documented for decades (1990s FBI/SC Forestry Commission profiles, 2003 USFA report, 2011 NVFC report, 2026 Wikipedia edits) and NFIRS still does not track it — the underlying problem and blind spot are structurally persistent.Firefighter arson - Wikipedia ↗
Documented profile criteria exist and a screening questionnaire is buildable, but matching candidates against an 'arsonist pattern' creates serious defamation/employment-discrimination liability and false-positive risk in small-town departments where reputation is everything — distribution to non-HR chiefs is also hard.Firefighter Arsonists: Stopping the Problem at the Door of the Firehouse ↗