SPOKANE, Wash. — The man accused of setting the fires that are burning in Washington state told investigators he had been planning it for weeks.
Aaron Farinacci said he started the Old Trails Fire, according to court documents, and that he used a weather app to predict a day that would have “high winds, low humidity, and sort of high heat,” KIRO reported.
The Old Trails Fire is one of three fires currently burning in the Spokane area. The flames have destroyed more than 900 buildings and have forced the evacuations of more than 67,000 people.
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Law enforcement was alerted to Farinacci after a man saw him near where the fire started.
“He was kind of walking back and forth,” Paul Child told CNN. “He was kind of watching us, staring at us or looking at us as we were driving by.” When Child drove past a second time, he said he saw the man in the same spot, “only this time, he was kind of bent over and looked like he was doing something in the bushes and the tree line on the other side of the railroad tracks.”
“Once he saw us, he just stood up and kind of acted kind of nervous … shuffling back and forth," Child said.
Shortly after getting home, Child’s daughter said there was a fire, and when he went to look, smoke was coming from where he saw the man.
Child described the man to law enforcement.
Law enforcement detained the man, but then let him go after he denied starting the fire or being in the area. He was arrested on Monday “without incident” after an investigator determined where the fire started, which was where Farinacci was kneeling in the grass, and charged him with first-degree arson, CNN reported.
Farinacci eventually said he started 25 fires beginning last July. Detectives said Farinacci feels fires are “powerful, beautiful, and that things that go through fire experience a kind of rebirth.”
A Spokane police officer said they found Farinacci sitting on a rock near a fire that started on July 8, but that he admitted having lighters on him to smoke cannabis, court documents said, according to CNN.
He told the court this week, however, that he was sitting there “due to falling and hurting his tailbone while setting fires” and that he had cannabis on him to use as an excuse for having lighters in case law enforcement spoke with him, prosecutors said.
He faces five counts of first-degree arson. Farinacci is being held on a $2 million bail. He has not entered a plea, but his attorney has asked for a mental health evaluation, KIRO said.