The former firefighter confessed to being responsible for eight fires in the municipalities of Sardoal and Vila de Rei.

A man who worked as a firefighter for eight years in Voluntarios do Sardoal admitted to being responsible for eight forest fires that destroyed more than 50 hectares of forest in the summer of 2022. In Santarém’s court, the 44-year-old former firefighter explained that at the time he was “always drunk and struggling with depression,” which he was diagnosed with in 2013.

This man, who was suspended from his job as a driver in the Sardoal Chamber after being detained by the judicial police, was remorseful and wished to start an alcoholism treatment program in the therapeutic community in Abrantes. In the meantime, yesterday he began to answer for eight forest fire crimes, four of them in a qualified form, fully confessing to the facts appearing in the Public Ministry Prosecutor’s Office (MP).

The defendant started fires in the wooded areas of the municipalities of Sardoal and Vila de Rei between June and August of last year, using cigarette lighters and lighters to start flames in areas with dry vegetation, which contributed to the spread of the fire. In just two fires he caused, the former firefighter caused more than €93,000 in damage, destroying thousands of pine and eucalyptus trees per hectare of burned land.

The deputy also mentions that the remaining fires did not have more serious consequences due to the prompt intervention of the fire department, which had already placed the device on the ground at the critical moment of forest fires. At the next court session, the panel of judges will analyze the psychiatric examination of the defendant, who is under house arrest with electronic surveillance.