JIM THORPE, Pa. – A teenager in Carbon County is facing serious charges after authorities say he set more than a dozen wildfires.<\/p>\n
“Investigators were able to identify a 17-year-old male who was present at or near each fire scene,” said Carbon County District Attorney Michael Greek.<\/p>\n
The boy is accused of setting across hundreds of acres in the Franklin Township and Jim Thorpe areas.<\/p>\n
Greek said he has brought the suspect to justice and charged the teen with 19 counts of arson, 19 counts of maliciously setting or causing a fire to a forest, 19 counts of risking a catastrophe and related offenses.<\/p>\n
“Property crimes are among the most difficult to solve. Arson among the very most difficult to solve. Because you know what happened, proving it and locking a person in. It’s almost impossible,” said Chief County Detective Jack Soberick.<\/p>\n
“There was no physical evidence at all that was leading us to believe that something else was causing these fires, and that’s what made us think they were suspicious,” said Jacob Novitsky, Fire Forester for the Pa. Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), Bureau of Forestry.<\/p>\n
Novitsky is leading the investigation that started last March through November, during peak wildfire season.<\/p>\n
“We determined all of these fires; a device was being used,” said Novitsky. “We did have some fires, you know, two or three fires in one day that were being set.”<\/p>\n
Greek says the fires endangered property, ripped through woods, put first responders and residents’ lives at risk.<\/p>\n
“And resulted in a substantial suppression cost to the taxpayer,” said Greek.<\/p>\n
“The Packerton fire, which was one of 19 fires solved by this comprehensive investigation, scorched 560 acres, which accounted for almost 10% of all the acres burned in Pennsylvania in 2025,” said John Norbeck, Deputy Secretary of the Pa. Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR).<\/p>\n
150 firefighters and first responders in Carbon County and beyond, spent their days and nights, battling the flames and keeping people safe.<\/p>\n
“Their dedication to a swift and thorough investigation was instrumental in identifying the suspect,” said Greek.<\/p>\n
No lives were lost, but officials say one firefighter was hurt.<\/p>\n
The DA says a juvenile proceeding is in the initial stages and evaluations are still ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JIM THORPE, Pa. – A teenager in Carbon County is facing serious charges after authorities say he set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[214,5523,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-101208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-carbon-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}