Guillaume Dominguez, edited by Gauthier Delomez 8:08 p.m., September 23, 2022

After a summer of 2022 marked by numerous fires, particularly in the south-west of France, the gendarmerie presented this Friday a report on its action.

This report reveals that in nearly a third of cases, the start of a fire was voluntary, even premeditated.

So far, 12 people have been convicted.

Terrible images engraved in the memories.

The south-west of France was hit by terrible fires this summer, and this Friday, the gendarmerie presented a report on its action.

In reality, each outbreak of fire immediately leads to the opening of a judicial inquiry.

In total, around fifty people have been arrested and 12 have already been sentenced.

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According to this report, 43 cases were handled by the gendarmerie, and in nearly a third of the cases the fire was deliberate, even premeditated, orchestrated by perpetrators with very varied profiles, of very different ages and social backgrounds.

Their only common point is that they are mostly men.

The snail technique to determine the origin of a fire

The identification of these arsonists was made thanks to a meticulous investigation.

Once the fire is extinguished, the gendarmerie's criminal identification technicians go on site to determine the origin of the fire, in particular using the so-called snail technique.

"Our technicians identify the area where the fire started, and then we will widen the circle, a bit like the shell of a snail", explains Lieutenant-Colonel Marie-Laure Pezant, spokesperson for the national gendarmerie, at the microphone from Europe 1.

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"We sanctuary an area", she continues, which will allow "to preserve the traces and clues. It can be for example a broken bottle, a cigarette butt or matches which will allow us to know if there is had a human intervention", describes Marie-Laure Pezant.

How some officials were found

These different clues sometimes even reveal traces of DNA.

This is what happened at the end of July, near the town of Orange in the Vaucluse.

The author of a start of fire was identified thanks to the analysis of a cigarette butt.

And when the DNA does not speak, it is very often calls for witnesses and video surveillance that make it possible to identify those responsible.

In the Pyrénées-Orientales, for example, the gendarmes were able to quickly find a young man at the origin of two fire starts.

His car had been spotted by neighbors minutes before the fires started.