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This volunteer firefighter admitted to having lit eight fires. Hearths that he himself was going to try to put out!.
On the D144 which climbs in switchbacks to Saint-Jean-de-la-Blaquière, in the west of Hérault, the wind, that night again, is blowing stubbornly. Two kilometers before the village, on both sides of what is called here the road to Rabieux, Guillaume, 36, sees the olive and almond trees of Michel quivering in his headlights, at the entrance to the Mas des Cambourras, where fourteen houses were built. A landscape of great beauty. Guillaume is a local child returning to his village. This Tuesday, July 26, shortly before midnight, he returns exhausted from an intervention which still mobilizes 650 firefighters from Sdis 34. He was relieved, after a “commitment to fire” welcomed by all. His colleagues continue the fight. But, before returning home, he stops his car, takes a lighter out of his pocket and lights the scrubland in four different places.
Read also: Fire starts in the Hérault: a volunteer firefighter suspected of being an arsonist in police custody
The fire from which he returns took in Gignac, 18 kilometers from Saint-Jean, on the 26th, at 11 am. It will be fixed the next day at 3 p.m. Two simultaneous departures that saw each other miles away, even from the highway. Two departures is the sign of a criminal act, for which he is exonerated. Pushed by this same damn wind, flames of ten meters will travel 8 kilometers while burning 800 hectares. They grazed Saint-Bauzille-de-la-Sylve, then spun on the village of Aumelas, which they licked so closely that the gendarmes of the Lodève company, led this summer by Captain Olivier Esseul, had to evacuate it. “People came to see us, says a policeman. Revolted, they assured us that if they found the author they would take care of it themselves.
Around 1 a.m. on Wednesday 27, Guillaume, distraught, telephoned the mayor of Saint-Jeande-la-Blaquière (700 inhabitants) from his home: “Bernard, come quickly! There are four departures just above Cambourras. Bernard Jahnich, 70, rushes. Sdis 34 is alerted. The flames threaten the first dwellings of the mas. They are 50 meters away. Guillaume also warns his best friend, David, whose house is further away, in the shelter. David rushes to wake up all the owners. Ten of them are Dutch, they have been coming on holiday for thirty-five years. “The sky was red, they say. Our children were crying. We just took our passports, the computers, and took refuge with our friend, the sculptor Yann Liébard, who lives in the last house. We were about thirty. »
The inhabitants of Saint-Jean remain discreet, think of his wife and his two boys
The Sdis 34 deploys a column on Saint Jean. Fifteen vehicles. Thanks to a couple of locals who were passing on the D144 around 12:30 a.m., three of the four departures were 90% controlled. “They ‘burned’ five small fire extinguishers that they had in their car, explains a gendarme. A miracle. But with what has been going on for three weeks, people are on the lookout. They equip themselves. The fourth start will be set around 4:30 a.m., after having ravaged 6 hectares, 100 century-old olive trees and 60 almond trees. The Lodève gendarmes are, of course, on the scene. As in Gignac, they facilitate access to firefighters, follow their manoeuvres, evolve with the fire. But we’re also dispatching the search brigade. “Still in Saint-Jean? He is surely our suspect, ”the investigators say to themselves. Three departures, May 26, in Saint-Privat, 5 kilometers as the crow flies from Saint-Jean. A departure on July 21, this one right against the village of Guillaume. In both cases, witnesses saw the same car traveling at high speed… all lights off. And so many suspicious departures in three years! The gendarmes have been on Guillaume’s trail for some time. The fire of the 27th will hasten the arrest.
“Guillaume was on the side of the road when I arrived at the farmhouse, remembers the mayor, Bernard Jahnich. As he was not involved in the fight, I sent him to the village hall to manage the fifteen people we welcomed. This is where the gendarmes questioned him. As they put the handcuffs on him, he looks down at them: “What are you doing? I’m a volunteer firefighter! We search him. In his pocket, a lighter. In his car, another. We embark it. The mayor arrives. “He looked at me like frozen, haggard. »
The fire has devastated some 1,000 hectares in the Hérault in recent days. The department is on heightened drought alert, like around forty others.
© DR
At the start of his police custody, which will last thirty-six hours, he played “of his omnipotence”, relates a gendarme. But in the face of the overwhelming evidence, he calmed down and emptied his bag, confessing to this year’s fire starts, looking “resigned”, “dejected”, perhaps realizing that he could never again tame the adored flames that crackled to burn his demons. “I need to see the fire.” To his Montpellier lawyer, Marion Barre, a court clerk, specializing in criminal and family law, he will discuss this visual pleasure. “He is aware of his addiction as a drug addict can be, she confides, but he has trouble explaining it. He lives in this duality: the excellent professional and the shame, the amazement. He was relieved to be arrested. Before the judge, he issued regrets, apologies to the firefighters and the owners of the burned plots.
The judge of freedoms decides on his incarceration. “I did not plead judicial review, continues Me Barre. Complicated, with the news of this summer. Trouble with public order, protection against himself, risk of lynching if he returned to Saint-Jean. I told him he ticked all the boxes. He replied: “I know.” Afterwards, I informed his wife. She fell from the clouds, wondering if he had not confessed under pressure to the acts of another.
Lynching is excessive. Without defending the child of the country, the inhabitants of Saint-Jean remain discreet. They think especially of his wife and his two sons, to whom Guillaume taught his profession of forester-sapper. In winter, they clear brush and maintain the trails. In the summer, they patrol with 600 or 1200 liter pick-ups, first responders whose strength lies in knowing the terrain by heart. “We act on 90% of fire starts”, he summarized in 2021 in the “Journal Toulousain”, in a committed interview where he even talks about global warming: “All the lungs of the earth are going up in smoke . Asked about fear: “It is always present. We are risking our lives and those of our colleagues. Our wives worry that they won’t see us coming home. It is a profession of passion. You have to be solid. We’re all addicted. Some say we’re crazy! His Facebook glorifies his passion, witness this painting of 30 fires, almost an artistic composition, which today could be likened to criminal trophies. For the arsonist, whose behavioral problems are poorly understood, each fire is a renewed pleasure because each fire is different.
Squatting, in the middle of his brothers in arms from Sdis 34, from which he is suspended pending legal proceedings
© DR
“I’m not minimizing the facts, but behind there is a family and two children,” Guillaume’s wife slips into his house’s intercom. Have empathy when you write…” The mayor of Saint-Jean does not hide his disappointment. He himself spent his entire career as a firefighter, colonel in Montpellier at the head of 31 barracks and 1,300 people. He had his big fights, 1000 hectares in Clapiers in 1981, where a volunteer, André Jeanjean, was burned in his vehicle. Five thousand hectares in Corsedu-Sud, in Aullène, in 2009. “Guillaume betrayed his family of firefighters, laments Bernard Jahnich. It is unacceptable, intolerable. In addition, he did not respect the charter of elected officials, which he signed, which makes his actions accountable throughout his term of office. Really, it is for all of us here a difficult test. Monday, August 1, the aedile of Saint-Jean signed a decree ending the mandate of his third deputy, elected in 2020, in charge of the festivities. Guillaume had prepared the 22nd Remise à Neuf festival, of theater and music, which takes place every first weekend of August and attracts 3,000 visitors.
The artists are scattered throughout the village, like a mini-Festival in Avignon. It also organized the music festival and the regional mountain biking championship, where the 200 children of the Vélo club lodevois race around the town. Finally, the mayor reveals to us, the qualified pyrotechnician that he was, like his father, Régis, who taught him everything, also started the fireworks… on July 13, at 11 p.m. “Despite the drought and the heat, continues Bernard Jahnich, I maintained the event. I trusted him completely. The rockets blasted off from a harvest trailer set up in the field behind the school, away from onlookers. Before that, the elected officials, including Guillaume, had served the meal in the shaded square of the town hall, 240 seats this year.
By lighting fires in the town where he was born, Guillaume felt a “need for social recognition”, reports Fabrice Belargent, the Montpellier prosecutor. Because it was he who extinguished them, thus staging his own heroism. He was protecting his own village. But under the ashes, the truth has come out.
Investigation with Gaëlle Legenne