'Depressed' 911 dispatcher deliberately set fires to keep fire department from being bored

A 911 dispatcher for a fire department in Ohio has admitted to setting 24 fires because he thought it would keep the department from being bored and had "to distract himself from depression.”

As The Daily Beast reports, all of the fires were set in the Wayne National Forest in less than a year by James Bartels, who worked as a 911 dispatcher for the Greenfield Township Volunteer Fire Department. Bartels has a history with the municipality as he unsuccessfully ran for Greenfield Township's fiscal officer in 2007.

He has been charged with the federal level of arson.

Bartels was first possibly linked to a fire in April when he was the first to report an undiscovered blaze, according to the complaint in the U.S. District Court for Ohio's Southern District. Six months later his pickup truck was spotted right before a wildfire started by an Ohio natural resource officer who then had the information filed by a U.S. Forest Service special agent.

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That was just the beginning as Bartels' Ford truck was spotted at the location of two other soon-to-be set fires. Upon his resignation in early November, at least 17 fires had been set.