For decades, Devil's Night in Detroit was a horror story -- a night when arsonists ran amok, and when homeowners stood on their lawns with garden hoses running while the city reeled amid hundreds of fires that firefighters couldn't douse.

Now? The plague of arson seems to be over. As trick-or-treaters made the rounds Wednesday night, Detroit Fire Commissioner Eric Jones released a statement about Devil's Night at the Free Press' request.

Referring to Tuesday, Jones said:

"It was a very quiet night, much quieter than last year. We all are looking forward to a fun time during Halloween in the D."

According to Jones, the daily totals of fires (counted from midnight to midnight) have been ebbing for several years on the two nights preceding Halloween. And they dropped dramatically from 2017 to this year, according to data released Wednesday.The number of fires for last year on Devil's Night -- counted from 12 a.m. on Oct. 30 to the following midnight -- totaled 14 building fires. That's a figure that once was in the hundreds. And this year, it shrank to just five.

The number last year for the overnight hours of Devil's Night -- that is, from 12 a.m. on Oct. 31 until 8 a.m. that morning -- were 4 building fires. And this year, the number was a mere two.

Detroit media first reported a huge increase in Devil's Night fires in 1983. The following year the city tallied more than 800 fires on that night, according to previous Free Press reports. Earlier this month, the city announced it was ending the "Angel's Night" campaign, an annual volunteer-led effort to combat the fires, as a result of the decrease in fires.

One reason that the annual rash of blazes died down may be that the city in recent years demolished 16,000 vacant houses and other empty buildings, removing prime targets for arsonists.

Related stories:

Angels' Night shaping up to be quiet in Detroit

Firefighters 'bracing' for arson over Halloween

Contact: blaitner@freepress.com