ROME -- A fire raging through San Felice Bay, a wooded coastal area near Vieste in Gargano in the north of Puglia, causing thousands to be displaced, is suspected to be caused by arson. 

  The regional authorities ordered aerial aid to be deployed to help tackle the flames, including two Canadairs and a helicopter from the fire brigade’s department. On the ground, responders from the Civil Protection have been working to extinguish the fire. 

  As a precautionary measure, people in the nearby Baia dei Campi, about a kilometre from the blaze, were evacuated. Around 1,200 holidaymakers were sent to an accommodation facility in Mattinata. Groups of people camping without easy access to transport, were, however, taken by boat to a gymnasium, provided for by the municipal administration. Many holidaymakers and campers however decided to cut their stay short and leave the area entirely. 

  The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Foggia has opened an inquest into the blaze, which was suspected to have been a deliberate act. “In a week, they tried to start the fire five times. And today they succeeded,” the mayor of Vieste, Giuseppe Nobiletti, said in response to the events. 

  The archbishop of Manfredonia, Vieste and San Giovaani Rotondo, Father Franco Moscone, also expressed anger at the fire ravaging the area. “A land violated at the hands fomenting hate towards Creation and the people of Gargano, a land that only faces a future if we are all able to preserve its identity and its beauty.” 

  However, it is not only Puglia that has been suffering from these blazes, as temperatures rise, fires have also taken hold in different areas of the country. Children attending a summer centre in Rome were evacuated in response to a fire which broke out in the Prenestino-Labicano quarter of Rome. Further south in the capital, another fire in the Park of the Aqueducts, burning along the brushwood of the park. 

lw