A man was arrested Thursday evening in the evening in Bédarieux (Hérault) when he was lighting a fire. An investigation was opened to determine if it can be the source of recent fires in the south of France, we learned this Friday, August 8, from sources close to the investigation.
The man, arrested around 11 p.m. in Bédarieux, a city of 5,000 inhabitants in the rural center of the department, was placed in police custody and an investigation opened under the direction of the Béziers prosecutor’s office, announced one of these sources, which required anonymity. “The investigation will have to determine if it is an isolated fact or if it is likely to have committed others. Due to the proximity to the Aude fires and elsewhere, we will trace its recent route ”she said.
According to another source close to the investigation, which also wished to keep anonymity, the man, 40, had already been seen going back and forth in this same street of Bédarieux during previous departures of Fire. The two sources explained that the suspect had first been intercepted by residents when he was lighting a fire, before being arrested shortly after by the gendarmes. Solicited by AFP, the prosecutor of Béziers, Raphaël Balland, did not respond immediately.
Since the end of July, fires have multiplied in the south and south-east of the country, after several weeks of hot weather, mobilizing thousands of firefighters. On Saturday, 28 departments in the south of the country will again be on orange “heat wave”, according to Météo France. Thursday evening, the firefighters managed to fix the giant fire in the Aude, the most important for at least fifty years in the French Mediterranean, which traveled 17,000 hectares of vegetation in a little more than forty-eight hours and cost a person. According to specialists, nine out of ten fires are of human origin, most often due to negligence.
