An agent of the National Forestry Office (ONF), suspected of having caused the start of the exceptional fire which ravaged the Corbières massif (Aude) during the summer of 2025, was indicted on Thursday June 3, a turning point in the investigation into the worst fire in the last 50 years in France.
This agent, who disputes his involvement, is being prosecuted for “involuntary destruction by aggravated fire”, indicated in a press release the public prosecutor of Montpellier, Thierry Lescouarc’h. The official was taken into custody on Tuesday with two other ONF agents, who were released on Wednesday evening without charge at this stage of the procedure.
The Montpellier prosecutor, who is supervising the investigation, did not give any details on the precise facts of which the accused is accused. According to the Midi Libre newspaper, investigators are seeking to establish whether a cigarette thrown out of the window of a patrol car could be the cause of the fire.
The custody of the three agents was the first known in these complex investigations into the origin of the gigantic fire in Ribaute (Aude). It broke out on August 5, 2025 along a departmental road, covered 17,000 hectares, burning more than 11,000. It was able to be extinguished on August 28, after three weeks of firefighting.
The possibility of a human origin had been put forward by the experts, any natural cause being, according to justice, “excluded”. While in police custody, the suspected agent “disputed his involvement in these facts”, according to the prosecutor. The hypothesis of “negligence” was put forward on Wednesday by a source close to the investigation.
“Cigarette butt?” »
The ONF confirmed the hearing of the three agents, emphasizing that “as the establishment is not implicated, it does not have access to the file and does not know the alleged facts”. The three men are Mediterranean forest protection officers, who regularly carry out DFCI (Forest Defense Against Fire) patrols in the field, said a source informed of the matter.
“We are really in shock, collectively and individually,” a local ONF official said Thursday. “Everyone is surprised, saddened, a little incomprehensible.” Alain Coste, mayor of Ribaute at the time of the fire, said he was “stunned” that an agent serving nature could possibly be involved in such a “drama”, which left a charred decor.
Since the fire, “tourist attendance has decreased, no one wants to spend vacations in a place where everything is devastated,” he explained Thursday. “The landscape is desolate, it’s always completely black,” confided the former mayor. The biggest fire of the summer of 2025 in France, the Corbières massif fire crossed 16 municipalities in Aude, destroyed 36 houses and caused the death of a 65-year-old woman at her home in the village of Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse. It is also the worst fire for at least 50 years on the French Mediterranean rim, according to the government database of forest fires in France (BDIFF).
Intensification of risks
Since the terrible fires in Gironde, which ravaged more than 30,000 hectares in 2022, the ONF has seen its missions expand and expand to territories newly exposed to the risk of fire due to the climate crisis. This has notably resulted in an increase in the number of patrols, increased prevention measures and more information on good practices, nine out of 10 fires being of human origin.
Its agents participate in the development of access trails and the positioning of cisterns and water points. During the summer season, they also carry out surveillance, detection and extinguishing missions of emerging fires. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez signed Thursday in Nîmes, at the opening of the campaign against forest fires, the order for two additional Canadairs, promised by Emmanuel Macron after the fires of summer 2022. They should be delivered in 2032 or 2033, while two aircraft already ordered should arrive in 2028. In total, the French fleet should reach 16 Canadairs within six years.
