A man confessed Friday to being at the origin of a fire which destroyed one hundred hectares of forest in the south of Charente-Maritime.
The individual had gone into the countryside to take care of a hidden cannabis plantation, announced the Saintes prosecutor.
“He had gone to cultivate a cannabis crop in the woods and he would have set the fire unwittingly with a motorized machine, a tiller or a tiller, it is not yet clear.
It would be an accidental fire, ”explained Nicolas Septe.
#feuxdeforet 🔥 More than a hundred firefighters are currently fighting a forest fire in the ...
Posted by Prefect of Charente-Maritime on Thursday, April 8, 2021
This man, who tried to flee when the gendarmes arrived at the scene of the fire on Thursday, had two lighters on him, according to the prosecutor.
Arrested Thursday and currently in police custody, he will also have to “explain himself about the cultivation of cannabis” in front of the Jonzac gendarmes.
A fire "under control" in the morning
The fire, which burned around a hundred hectares in the town of Cercoux, on the edge of the Gironde, was declared "under control" by firefighters on Friday morning.
More than 50 machines, 150 firefighters, two helicopters and a Dash civil security plane were engaged for several hours, specifies the Sud-Ouest daily.
"It will undoubtedly still take the whole weekend to come to the end" completely, specified the commander Samuel Cessac, of the Departmental Fire and Rescue Service (SDIS), according to which "the disaster area represents a loop of 4 kilometers ”.
While the forest fire did not cause any injuries, six people were evacuated as a preventive measure.
Last weekend, a major fire of undetermined origin had burned 300 hectares of forest, mainly pines, in the Médoc, in the north of the neighboring department of Gironde.
