Italian police say they have
finally solved the riddle of fires in a small Sicilian fishing
village that have kept experts guessing for the last 10 years,
variously ascribed to spontaneous combustion, strange sources of
electrical power and even the hand of the devil himself.
Police on Thursday arrested a man in the village near
Messina in Sicily suspected of setting the spate of mysterious
fires to get government aid.
Giuseppe Pezzino, 26, was arrested for allegedly starting
the blazes that have baffled locals since 2004 with the help of
his father, who was placed under investigation.
Pezzino was first placed under investigation in October
when Carabinieri paramilitary police searched 11 homes and
several vehicles in the hamlet of Canneto di Caronia, where
cases of apparent spontaneous combustion have been dumbfounding
residents and experts alike for more than 10 years.
Giuseppe Pezzino, 25, was probed in connection with
incidents that took place between July and October last year,
police said.
He allegedly set fire to home appliances in an apparent
attempt to have them billed as unexplained phenomena that
qualified for cash aid, authorities said.
The local mayor remained unconvinced that a human being
might well be behind the mysterious fires that have been
plaguing his hamlet.
"I myself, along with law enforcement and national
journalists, have seen objects burst into flames out of
nowhere," said Mayor Calogero Beringheli.
Beginning in February 2004, items ranging from air
conditioning units, fuse boxes, refrigerators and washing
machines to microwave ovens and a car appear to have gone up in
spontaneous combustion.
Canneto, which consists of a single street positioned
between a railway line and the sea, was evacuated in March 2004
after a spate of blazes.
After months of inconclusive tests by scientists,
authorities allowed residents to return to their homes.
The fires then resumed when three electrical sockets
caught fire.
Villagers watched as geologists, electricians, telephone
technicians and police investigators played cat-and-mouse with
the mysterious phenomena.
The dozens of scientists and researchers brought in to
explain the fires - apparently caused by sudden rushes of
electrical power - never managed to witness an outbreak as it
happened and to monitor it.
At one stage in the 2004 inquiries, an engineer said Max
Planck's quantum theory and Albert Einstein's photon theory were
implicated in an underground energy accumulation that had been
channelled upwards via a network of wires to cause the
"spontaneous combustion."
In October 2004 Sicilian regional authorities asked the
Rome government to declare a state of emergency in the village
after the nine-month spate of fires.
Declaring a state of emergency would release cash from a
special state fund set aside to cope with national disasters
such as earthquakes or severe flooding.
An investigating magistrate arrived in Canneto to open a
probe into the blazes that had been plaguing the small fishing
village.
Magistrate Enza Napoli was accompanied by engineering
expert Franco Valenti, who was hired by the seaside village's 42
inhabitants to investigate the case.
After months of inconclusive tests by scientists,
authorities allowed residents to return to their homes.
Police at the time ruled out a possible pyromaniac or
hoaxer after seeing electrical wires burst into flames.
Valenti and many of the residents were convinced the
problem was caused by grounding wires running off the nearby
railway tracks. They thought the wires could be causing a
buildup of electrical energy.
But railway officials said the local line conforms to
safety norms and was identical to the track system in use
throughout the country.
Some residents, meanwhile, continued to believe the fires
were the work of the devil.
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