Residents of the Range Heights subdivision near Loganville have moved from their back decks to their front porches to keep a wary eye out for whoever has torched three houses there in the past two months.
Gwinnett County fire investigators say it remains a mystery why anyone would want to destroy homes in the neighborhood, which is a few miles off U.S. 78.
Thanks to neighbors' vigilance, firefighters were summoned quickly and were able to quench the most recent fire that someone started Friday afternoon at a house in the 2300 block of Range Heights Terrace. The fire damage was contained to one room near the front of the home, Gwinnett fire spokesman Lt. Colin S. Rhoden said.
Residents of the home had moved out three days earlier, according to neighbor Chris Carella.
Weeks earlier, a blaze erupted June 27 in the 2400 block of Range Heights Terrace, a house that was also unoccupied.
A third suspicious fire occurred at 4 a.m. June 19 in the 3700 block of Red Rose Court. Flames engulfed the house and caused extensive damage. That home had recently been foreclosed upon, Rhoden said.
One of the fires involved a storage facility located behind a residence. It, too, went up in flames.
Carella, who has lived in the Range Heights neighborhood for 19 years, described it as a working-class warren of homes priced between $70,000 and $100,000. He said neighbors only recently formed a Community Oriented Police Services program, and that block captains were sharing information on a weekly basis now about any suspicious behavior.
"People in this community are proud of what they have, because everything they have, they've worked for," Carella said. "The neighborhood really has become very vigilant. Probably two or three nights a week if you drive through, you start to see people sitting on their front porches instead of their back porches."
Fire investigators are asking anyone with information to contact the Gwinnett Fire Arson and Explosives Investigation Section at 678-518-4890 or the Georgia Arson Control Hotline at 1-800-282-5804. Georgia Arson Control offers a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for arson.
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