A man who served 13 years in prison for a 1979 arson conviction has been charged with setting fire to a rowhouse this week less than two blocks from his home, and police are questioning him about more than a dozen other fires in the area since October, authorities said.

Ronald William Privette, 62, was arrested about 4 a.m. Monday at his home in the 2200 block of Christian St., shortly after witnesses reported seeing him leave a vacant house in the 500 block of S. Bentalou St. moments before it burst into flames, said police Detective Homer Pennington, an arson squad investigator.

Pennington said it was the second time in recent weeks the same house had been torched.

Privette was charged with one count of arson, and held at Central Booking and Intake Center on $1 million bond.

Pennington said Privette is cooperating in the investigation of at least 15 arson fires in vacant houses within blocks of his home since October, including one Feb. 28 in the 300 block of S. Payson St., where firefighters found the body of a transient man in a second-floor room. Privette is not a suspect in the man's death, the detective said.

All of the fires were set by lighting trash and other debris within the houses, and there was no evidence of a flammable liquid being used, Pennington said.

The detective said Privette lived in the rowhouse on Christian Street with an 81-year-old woman and two younger female boarders.