Flames reach the slope below the Madonna della Guardia sanctuary

A fire that broke out in the afternoon on the hills above San Giovanni Incarico, in the province of Frosinone, reached by evening the slope on which the Madonna della Guardia sanctuary stands.

Mayor Paolo Fallone ordered the provincial road linking the village to the sanctuary closed to traffic at around 11pm. "From this moment the road is closed for safety reasons," he announced. The stretch of provincial road 82 towards Pico was also closed.

Firefighters, the municipal civil protection service, volunteers from the Lupi Ciociari group and a firefighting helicopter worked at the scene. Overnight operations concentrated on protecting buildings, because aircraft cannot fly in the dark.

Suspicion of arson

The mayor attributed the fire to a non-natural cause. "Nature does not do these things, the hand of man does," he said. Determining the point of ignition falls to the fire service and investigating authorities, and is made harder by the fact that traces are often erased by the firefighting itself.

Southern Lazio is among the worst affected areas in Italy this season, with dry biomass built up after months of below-average rainfall. The same conditions produced large fires in recent days around Como, in the Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and in Belgium.

Sanctuaries and isolated churches in commanding positions are a particular problem for fire crews: they are often reachable by a single road which, when a fire runs up the slope, is both the access route for vehicles and the escape route for anyone inside the building. Closing it in advance is meant to stop those two functions from clashing.