Two cars torched as summer arson season looms large

November 5, 2022

Police at the scene. Facebook/Orange Rural Fire Brigade.

By Peter Holmes

Rural Fire Brigades from from Orange and Lucknow attended an early morning blaze on Saturday after two cars were torched on Lone Pine Avenue.

The Rural Fire Brigade told The Orange News Examiner a call to emergency services had been made shortly after 5am Saturday, and that crews had attended and extinguished the blaze by about 5:30am.

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"We had two brigades - Orange and Lucknow - and four units there," a firefighter said.

After extinguishing the fires the crews stayed on the scene to assist police with cleaning the road after the vehicles had been towed away.

Chief inspector Peter Atkins (left) showing the Stolen Motor Vehicle chart at the community meeting. Copyright: Orange News Examiner.

Vehicle-related arson has been an ongoing issue in Orange.

At a community meeting in September police displayed a graph that showed the number of stolen motor vehicles from August 2021 to August 2022.

The number of stolen cars (red line in the above photo) peaked in January (17), February (17) and March (20).

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The number of cars that were set alight (green line) spiked heavily in January (10) and February (5).

Police said at the meeting that crime in Orange tended to increase over the summer months before tapering off as the weather cooled.

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