N4T Investigators: Tucson fire department data shows risk of fires tied to homeless activity | News

TUCSON, Ariz. (KVOA) – Many residents and business owners in Tucson tell the News 4 Tucson Investigators they are worried about the threat of homeless individuals starting fires that could get out of control. The News 4 Tucson Investigators spent more than a month looking into the issue.

Data from the Tucson Fire Department shows it’s a very real threat they are seeing. 

That threat was put on display two weeks ago, an abandoned gas station near Reid Park caught fire. The video of the blaze and a close call for firefighters as the building suddenly exploded went viral online, the Tucson Fire Department connected the blaze to homeless activity.

“It is an increased risk that we’re seeing,” said Capt. Andy Skaggs, deputy fire marshal for the Tucson Fire Department.

The News 4 Tucson Investigators obtained data showing that more than 35 fires related to homeless activity have occurred this year. Last year, there were 86 confirmed cases, resulting in more than $1.6 million in losses.

In 2024, there were over 1,200 incidents where homeless activity was reported in the area of a fire but couldn’t be confirmed as the cause.

Skaggs explained that warming fires, cooking fires, and smoking materials among the homeless are common causes of these fires.

“The unhoused individuals may have a warming fire, a cooking fire, several of the unhoused individuals smoke in some capacity. Smoking materials are a heavy cause of fire,” he said.

“This whole area is full of encampments and where they start the fires,” said Elizabeth Gonzales Gann, CEO of the Diet of Hope Institute, located near Tucson Mall.

Gann described frequent incidents of property damage and fire hazards near her institute. “We’ve had to call emergency services three or four times the past year because they started a fire right over in that corner but they also started a fire over there by the river,” she said.

She expressed frustration with city leadership, particularly after a measure to ban camping in washes was voted down by the city council in March. “We should feel like we are protected and that we feel safe in our environment but we do not,” Gann said.

Adrian Wurr, a resident of the Hedrick Acres neighborhood, has witnessed multiple fires near a local wash. “It gets out of hand and this is the result there’s the apartment complex a stones throw away,” Wurr said.

Wurr joined other homeowners in filing a lawsuit against the city for failing to maintain the wash. A judge ruled against the homeowners but last week the Arizona Court of Appeal Division 2 reversed the ruling and found the City liable.

“We’ve seen it with the Palisades fire, we’ve seen it in Paradise, California, in Sonoma, California fires get out of control,” Wurr said.

The Tucson Fire Department urges anyone who sees an out-of-control fire to call 911 and advises the homeless to exercise caution. “They aren’t just putting property at risk but their own lives at stake and we don’t want to see that,” Skaggs said.

Skaggs initiated the tracking of homeless-related fires in 2020 after noticing an increase of about 100 fires per year from what they would expect to see. The trend has persisted annually and the numbers of homeless related fires almost perfectly explained the discrepancy in numbers.