Palm Tree Blazes Baffle Texas Officials

Officials in the coastal Texas town of Galveston are baffled by a series of arson fires targeting palm trees, the Houston Chronicle reports. “This is strange,” the town’s fire marshal says of the spree, which has hit 30 trees since May. “It’s the first case in my experience dealing with a tree arsonist.”

Officials say they don’t see a geographical pattern in the nearly nightly blazes, which are taking down one of the few species of trees that survived the wash of salt water brought by last fall’s Hurricane Ike. “They are the only ones that really made it, and somebody wants to go around and burn them up,” says one local. “It’s really pathetic.”
(More arson stories.)