The man suspected of having thrown a cigarette butt on a motorway rest area has been arrested

A man suspected of being at the origin of a vast fire in the hinterland of Saint-Tropez (Var) in 2021 which had killed two people and devastated 7,000 hectares, was arrested and indicted, a- we learned Friday from the public prosecutor of Draguignan.

Prosecuted for “recklessly starting a fire causing death”, this forty-year-old man from Var, suspected of having caused the fire after throwing a cigarette butt on a motorway rest area, was indicted on November 22 and placed under judicial supervision, said Patrice Cambérou, confirming information from the regional daily Var-Morning.

Presented by the prosecution as a marginal having problems with narcotics, according to the regional daily, the man admitted to having lit a cigarette but claims to have thrown the cigarette butt in a place provided for this purpose.

Two dead people

The suspect was arrested “after a colossal investigative work and thanks to several cross-checks” which made it possible to reach “the conclusion that he was alone on the rest area”, explained the prosecutor.

The fire, one of the largest in the last ten years in the Var, started on August 16, 2021 from a motorway rest area on the A57. It had cost the lives of two people and led to the evacuation of around 10,000 people in an extremely busy region during the summer. The firefighters had taken more than a week to come to the end.

It had also devastated some 7,000 hectares of forest, vineyards and scrubland and in particular a large part of the National Natural Reserve of the Plaine des Maures, a haven of biodiversity which is home to the Hermann’s tortoise, the last terrestrial species in Europe.

According to the National Office of Forests, 90% of fire starts are caused by man and among them a third is voluntary, another third is caused by accidents and the last third comes from negligence such as throwing cigarette butts. Lightning is the only natural cause of fire outbreaks and it affects less than 10% of outbreaks on average.

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