Quotes of the Day

Helene Veret and her architect husband, Jean-Louis, have long known the perils of fire. After a 1970 blaze swept through their four hectares near the village of Plan-de-la-Tour, 20 km north of the Gulf of St. Tropez, Jean-Louis had his house hewn out of a rock cliffside so fire would pass over it. But after the fires of the past 10 days, that troglodyte house is all that is left of the Vérets' summer retreat. Flames laid waste to everything, leaving only the skeletons of a few cork oaks and the aluminum kitchen sink from a trailer where their vacationing daughter and grandchildren had been staying. "It looks like Verdun in 1916," she says. "The devastation is terrifying."

Five dead tourists, 19 wounded firefighters, 30,000 hectares destroyed — spurred by unusually high winds, the worst fires in more than a decade in the desiccated south of France have taken an awful toll. In northeastern Portugal, a blaze of some 7,000 hectares claimed two victims as well, and new wildfires were under way at the end of last week in the southern tourist region of the Algarve. In both countries, the fires have left in their wake a sense of angry bafflement. Many of them appear to have been set deliberately, but to prevent future disasters authorities may have to do more than just look for firebugs playing with matches on deserted roadsides.

Fire experts suggest that as much as 80% of the fires start through negligence rather than deliberate arson, but the hunt is on for arsonists in France. A French judge last week launched legal action against Stéphane Jousse, 30, after he admitted to starting seven fires near Draguignan in July — though not the ones that raged last week — and two others last summer. Described by a prosecutor as "an individual of fragile mental state" who wasn't fully aware of the consequences of his actions, the municipal employee reportedly acted out of spite because his application to join a local volunteer fire brigade was rejected last year. The mayor of Fréjus launched a separate inquiry after three bottles with wicks in them were found near a burned-out campground. At one point, as many as 30 fires started within a single half-hour. Some authorities called it terrorism, but others said the fires had been set just for the hell of it. "What's really fueling these fires is the heritage of pastoralism," says Michel Thinon, a researcher at the Mediterranean Institute of Ecology and Paleoecology in Marseilles. He argues that millennia of human activity have favored the growth of pine forests, which are prone to fires, over the hardwoods that originally grew in the region. Now with more people than ever along the Med, municipal officials still obdurately refuse to reverse course. "Instead of planting the oak and ash, mayors plant quick-growing pines so they can point to the new forest before their terms run out," Thinon says. "Then we get more fires."

France passed a law in 1995 demanding that local authorities take strict fire-prevention measures, but in the hardest-hit Var region not a single such program is yet in place. Mayors say they don't have the money to clear the underbrush that accelerates the fires, nor do they widely enforce provisions aimed at preventing developers from cashing in on fire-cleared parcels. Once the fire has done its work, the development gallops on. As France's fires ebbed late last week, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy promised more money for prevention and a special conference on the issue.

Helene Véret has heard such earnest declarations before. The last big blaze to ravage their place, in 1990, turned a beloved 300-year-old umbrella pine into a stump. The Vérets made the best of it, using it as a natural bench for taking in the stunning view of the coast. This fire obliterated even the stump. The Vérets take no comfort in knowing that the view won't be what it was for years to come.

• JAMES GRAFF
• Were arsonists responsible for France's worst forest fires in over a decade?