Firefighter torches home because it's untidy

A US firefighter has been charged with arson after setting fire to his mother's mobile home because he was unhappy with her untidiness.

Police allege that William Feimster, 25, of Martinsburg, West Virginia, torched the mobile home, where he lived on-and-off.

In a video-taped statement he gave to police, Feimster said he drove an ambulance to his mother's Arden-Nollville Road home on November 20, to retrieve some items, including videos to watch at work.

After becoming upset with the home's messy interior, Feimster, the South Berkeley Volunteer Fire Department's ambulance rescue chief, lighted a roadside flare - a device used at crash sites.

He put the lit flare in a kitchen rubbish bin, police allege. He then drove back to the ambulance company and, when the fire call was dispatched, went to his mother's home to help fight the blaze, police said.

Feimster's mother was not at home at the time. The mobile home was destroyed.

"He said it (the mobile home) was very sloppy and he didn't like it," said Sgt Russell Shackelford of the Berkeley County Sheriff's Department, according to the Herald Mail newspaper.