Man who 'craved to be a hero' jailed for Sydney fires

Peter Burgess watched television footage of New York firefighters hauling people from the wreckage of the World Trade Centre and longed to emulate their heroics. Yesterday, he began a two-year jail sentence for single-handedly starting most of the bushfires that ravaged eastern Australia last Christmas.

The fires reached the suburbs of Sydney and raged for weeks, destroying scores of homes and killing thousands of sheep and native animals.

In many cases, Burgess, a volunteer with the Rural Fire Service, was the "member of the public" who telephoned the emergency services. He was often first on the scene, turning up in his uniform to extinguish the burgeoning blazes.

Burgess, a 20-year-old drifter, pleaded guilty earlier this week to lighting 25 of the fires in New South Wales. He told police after he was arrested in April that he resented the accolades won by the New York Fire Department after 11 September and yearned to be feted for taking part in a dramatic firefighting episode.

Police believe his modus operandi may have been inspired by a war film, Stalag 17, in which a cigarette with a filter stuffed with crushed match heads is thrown into bushland. Burgess used the same method each time, watching the cigarette slowly burn until the match heads flared and ignited the undergrowth.

The bushfires – the worst since 1994 - began in the Blue Mountains, 25 miles west of Sydney, and swept down towards the coast on Christmas Day, fanned by high winds.

Almost miraculously, no one was killed or injured but thousands of people were evacuated from their homes and hundreds of thousands of hectares of bushland were consumed by flames. More than 1.24 million acres were charred despite the efforts of 20,000 firefighters and more than 70 water-bombing aircraft. Two giant water-bombing helicopters from an Oregon company helped control the fires, and a third was borrowed from the state of Victoria.

Burgess lit fires in the three worst-affected areas, including the Blue Mountains. But his arson attacks had begun before the terrorist strikes on New York and Washington. In January last year, he started a blaze on the outskirts of his home town in Albury, on the border between New South Wales and Victoria.

The fire caused substantial damage before local fire crews – including Burgess – put it out. He then joined the Rural Fire Service as a probationary member, hoping his volunteer work would lead to a full-time job with the New South Wales Fire Brigade.

His desire to be eulogised as a hero intensified after 11 September, he told police, and he embarked on an active career as an arsonist. Eleven days after the World Trade Centre tumbled, he started a large fire at Dooralong, on the Central Coast north of Sydney, which burned close to a school, guest houses and farms.

Two weeks later, Burgess, described as immature and attention-seeking, started another fire nearby. In October, he lit three more in the same area, riding his mountain bike along fire trails to start them. During November and December, he was responsible for three more blazes in Dooralong and two back in Albury. At the height of the bushfire crisis, in late December and January, he moved around New South Wales, starting four more fires in his home town and on the Central Coast.

In January and February, he lit 10 in the Blue Mountains. Police suspect his toll may have been higher. Burgess, said to be an intelligent man from a good family, was arrested after a tip-off from the public. The Rural Fire Service, who were helping police to investigate, tracked many of the emergency calls to his mobile phone.

His solicitor told magistrates he had been raised on a diet of action movies and found real life mundane.