2023 was the worst year for arson in Philadelphia in nearly 20 years. This year is already on track to be worse.

The two-story rowhouse on the 100 block of West Cliveden Street was engulfed in flames. A family home for more than 60 years was destroyed, along with memories, heirlooms, and housing security.

Today, little more than the charred facade of the Mount Airy dwelling remains. The windows on the second floor are gone and the gutters are warped by heat and blackened by smoke. The front door is boarded up, and a sign on the door warns trespassers to keep out.

No one was home at the time of the fire, a midafternoon blaze in March 2023.

Police say the fire was arson, part of a record-setting trend in Philadelphia last year that is on pace to continue in 2024.

Last year was the worst year for arson in Philadelphia in nearly 20 years, with 703 reported arsons across the city, according to police data. The more than 700 arsons reported in 2023 represent a rate of 4.5 per 10,000 people, and is the highest since at least 2006.

Such fires can have devastating effects on those who lose their homes.

“It takes away your security, your trust. It’s devastating. It’s heartbreaking,” said the woman who owned the Mount Airy home that was set ablaze. “People lose their livelihoods in these fires. And it doesn’t just affect the family who lived in the home but it affects the entire family. It affects the community.”

In her case, the woman said, police told her the fire that destroyed the home where she lived with her 21-year-old son was started by her estranged husband. The woman, 59, asked not to be identified for safety reasons — she had previously been granted a protection-from-abuse order against her husband. He remains at large.

She doesn’t know whether or when she’ll ever get back inside the home she was born and raised in, where she raised her children and several grandchildren. She doesn’t know whether she’ll be able to get back the life consumed by flames.

Her family is among scores of people affected by arson, a crime that has ballooned in past years.

As of March 28, there have been 159 arsons reported this year, 20% more than the 132 reported in the same time period last year. According to data from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, there were 24 arson arrests in 2024, the most to start a year since at least 2013.

Last year, there were 68 arson arrests, 59 of which were prosecuted, according to District Attorney’s Office data. Of those cases prosecuted, 23 people were found guilty, or 39% of the cases, the data show. There were 36 cases withdrawn, or 61%.

Arson, a criminal charge, encompasses a wide range of intentionally set fires, including structure fires, vehicle fires, and litter or trash fires.

Of the 22 arson cases in Municipal Court in 2023, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office said 18 were dismissed or withdrawn due to witnesses failing to appear in court. Most of the cases that are held for trial and adjudicated in Common Pleas court result in a conviction, the spokesperson said.

The Philadelphia Police Department did not comment directly on the discrepancy between reported arsons and arson arrests, but said it was important to look at various factors they say contribute to the divide.

“Possible aspects to consider include, but not limited to, is the challenges in gathering evidence, and complexities in identifying suspects,” a department spokesperson said in an email. The police department’s “role is to ensure accountability for those responsible for intentionally setting the fire or any other crime that may have been committed before the arson, i.e. homicide, theft, burglary, etc.”

City fire officials are concerned about the uptick in intentionally set fires and are taking steps to deal with the surge.

But the department’s arson investigation team, a small, four-member squad, is constantly busy, doing what it can to investigate the underlying crimes, Deputy Fire Marshal Chris Beale said in an interview. Last year, of the 1,800 fires investigated by the city’s arson investigation unit, more than a third were intentionally set, he said.

After the arson squad reports its findings, the fire marshal decides whether a fire is arson or not.

“We definitely have a problem with arson in the city,” he said.

Nearly every day, members of the arson investigation team fan out across the city, responding to fires and trying to determine whether they were accidental or deliberately set. It is daunting work.

Sifting through ashes and the burnt ruins of torched buildings, investigators search for clues to the fire’s origin, sometimes aided by search dogs trained to detect accelerants, such as gasoline or other flammable liquids.

They then submit their findings to the Fire Marshal’s Office, which rules on whether a fire was arson, and the Philadelphia Police department investigates.

As the number of arsons across the city has surged in recent years, the Philadelphia Fire Department last year added eight more investigators to the Fire Marshal’s Office, including two more investigators to the arson investigation unit, and added a second fire dog to the team, said Beale, who is also a battalion chief. The office of 25 people now has 19 investigators looking into fires across the city.

Philadelphia’s recent spike in arsons is anomalous when looking at other similar cities.

Comparable cities such as Baltimore, Buffalo, and Chicago have seen arsons level off or dip, data show.

In Philadelphia, however, although the overall rate seems to have spiked dramatically after the start of the pandemic, the rate has been steadily increasing since 2015, when it reached a historical low point.

What gives rise to the blazes that destroy homes, businesses, and cars across the city with alarming regularity varies widely, investigators say. Some are born of revenge, anger — or even lovers’ spats, Beale said. Others are set in a bid for insurance money, experts say.

John Lentini, of Scientific Fire Analysis L.L.C. in Florida, a consulting company for arson forensics and fire investigations, agreed that arsons are often the result of grudges and arguments that grow volatile. Sometimes, property owners set their buildings ablaze to get the insurance money, he said.

Lentini, who has helped write national standards and texts in fire investigations, said Philadelphia’s abundance of abandoned properties also made the city particularly vulnerable to the crime.

“We do have a lot of vacant buildings. More so than most major cities,” said Beale.

In some cases, fires are started by people squatting in abandoned houses who were simply trying to stay warm and unintentionally set buildings ablaze, said Lentini.

He likened the surge in arson in Philadelphia to a spate of fires in the South Bronx in the 1970s, during which the neighborhood lost more than 90% of its buildings to fire and abandonment due to the city government closing down many fire companies, particularly in lower-income neighborhoods, according to the New York Post.

Many of the buildings that burned down in the Bronx were abandoned, the Post reported. At the peak of the fires in the late ‘70s, as many as 7% of the fires in the Bronx were ruled arson, the New York Post reported.

Another characteristic of Philadelphia that may contribute to its susceptibility to arson is the level of poverty in the city, said Beale. Among the nation’s top 10 largest cities, Philadelphia, has the highest level of poverty, with more than 22% of households living below the poverty line.

Often, businesses might be going under, and owners set them aflame, said Beale. In the case of vehicle arson, some cars are stolen or might be involved in a crime, or owners might be behind on car payments, prompting them to torch the vehicles, he said.

As arson rises across the city, the deepest concentration of such blazes happens in the Kensington area, and in North and Central Philadelphia in general, police data show.

There are also high concentrations of arsons in Center City and western parts of the city.

In the face of a continued increase in arsons, the city’s Fire Marshal’s Office does what it can to find resolution amid the rubble. The blazes pose a challenge for those responsible for battling the flames and investigating the origins of the fires, said Beale.

“We got our hands full here,” he said.