It wasn’t an arson conspiracy that led to the 10-alarm fire in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, last month, but the reckless behavior of two homeless men looking to sell scrap copper salvaged from the abandoned buildings, police officials said.

One of the men suspected of setting the fire, Leszek Kuczera, 59, was charged with arson, burglary, reckless endangerment, and petty larceny yesterday. Police were seeking the other man, whose name wasn’t released.

Metal scavengers have caused some of the largest fires in the city’s recent history. A retired Parks Department employee accidentally started an 18-alarm blaze with a makeshift torch made of newspapers and plastic bags at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn Heights in 1995.

Also yesterday, the building’s owners were charged with violating city regulations – although authorities did not link those violations to the size of the fire.

The fire at Greenpoint on May 2 was the city’s largest in a decade, excluding the World Trade Center attacks. It took hundreds of firefighters working day and night to douse the fire, which consumed 14 acres and required more than eight million gallons of water to extinguish. The building contained massive piles of clothing, insulation stuffing, and other debris, which fueled the fire. Investigators said from the start that they suspected arson because of the quickness the fire became out of control – a symptom of a fire aided by gasoline or other accelerants.

Mr. Kuczera and his companion laid insulated copper wiring they found in the building over a set of eight tires in rows of four, the commanding officer of the police Arson and Explosion Squad, Lieutenant Dennis Briordy, said. Mr. Kuczera then poured an accelerant over the array and lit it with a lighter, aiming to melt off the insulating plastic,he said.

“It was not his intent to burn the building,” Lieutenant Briordy said.”The fire seemed to get away from him. The fuel load just amassed a larger fire than he expected – he lost control of it.”

Clean copper wiring can fetch double the price of the same wire still encased in insulation. A clean two-inch-thick copper cable goes for between $2.50 and $3.50 a pound, the foreman of the Brooklyn-based Arma Scrap Metal Company, Alexander Ayara, said.

“The buildings had telephone wires and cables,” he said. “They see that, they see gold.”

Police said they came across Mr. Kuczera early in their investigation. At first detectives spoke to everyone in the neighborhood, asking for details about what was inside the building and who frequented it. Mr. Kuczera claimed to have knowledge of the inside of the buildings, Lieutenant Briordy said, and after additional questioning, he admitted to starting the fire on Tuesday night. He was expected to be arraigned last night.

Mr. Kuczera had scavenged for metal in the building before, but it seemed he became too ambitious in his enterprise on May 2 and tried to strip too much at one time, Lieutenant Briordy said.

A 10-minute walk from the Greenpoint terminal is Fortune Metal Inc., a scrap metal company that accepts walk-ins with found metal. The manager of the company, identified only as Steve, refused to comment about whether the company had dealings with Mr. Kuczera. A detective visited the company early yesterday afternoon as part of the Arson and Explosion Squad’s ongoing investigation. No other suspects were charged yesterday, though Lieutenant Briordy said police received reports that multiple homeless people visited the buildings to get scrap metal.

A lifelong resident of Greenpoint, Charlie Rewkowsky, 64, said the neighborhood had a sizeable population of homeless people. Many of them make their living selling plastic and glass bottles, cans, and scrap metal, he said.

“They’re pushing shopping carts, going to get the money for their bottle of Sneaky Pete or whatever they drink these days,” Mr. Rewkowsky said.

Portions of the buildings remain, but they are slated for demolition. Large mounds of multi-colored debris are piled in front of the charred remains of what was once an old rope factory.

The current owner of the Greenpoint Terminal Market, Joshua Guttman, along with his son, Jack Guttman, and four real-estate companies were separately charged with 434 counts of failure to maintain privately owned waterfront property – one for each day they allegedly didn’t repair problems the Department of Small Business Services Dockmasters told them to fix. Each charge is an unclassified misdemeanor and carries a penalty of up to $5,000.

Mr. Guttman came under scrutiny after the fire because one of his buildings had a fire with suspicious circumstances in 2004. The cause of the four-alarm fire at 247 Water Street in Brooklyn was never ascertained, fire marshals said.

Mr. Guttman’s lawyers, Israel Goldberg and Joseph Kozovsky, didn’t return multiple telephone calls for comment yesterday.

Lieutenant Briordy said Mr. Guttman had been cooperative during parts of the investigation, but uncooperative during others, though he would not give details.