Incident · January 2004 – October 2014 · Canneto, Caronia (Messina), Sicily, Italy
Canneto di Caronia fires and the government study group (Sicily, 2004–2014)
Also known as Canneto di Caronia, Caronia fires, fuochi di Caronia
Partly explained. A court at Patti convicted a local resident at first instance in 2022 of setting the 2014 fires, and his father of complicity in one of them and of fraud to obtain public funds; the press reports that the magistracy archived the earlier series in 2007 as deliberate and human, while the government study group had favoured high-power electromagnetic emissions. (source)
Fires that broke out in homes, appliances and cars in Canneto, a hamlet of Caronia on Sicily's Tyrrhenian coast, from 2004 onwards. A court has since found that the fires of 2014 were set by hand: in 2022 the Tribunale di Patti convicted a local resident at first instance of arson and fraud, and his father of complicity in one fire and of fraud to obtain public aid. The press reports that the magistracy had already archived the first series, in 2007, as deliberate and human.
The case belongs here because of what the government's own study group said in between. A Prime Minister's ordinance of April 2005 set it up to find the cause of the "anomalous electrical phenomena", with the Navy and the Air Force. According to L'Espresso, its confidential report of 2007 blamed high-power electromagnetic pulses from an unknown source at sea, ranked secret military technology and UFOs as candidates, and gathered local UFO sightings. The report itself has not been published, and we have not seen it.
Sources: OPCM 29 April 2005 no. 3428 (Gazzetta Ufficiale no. 107, 10 May 2005) · L'Espresso, 25 October 2007 · LiveSicilia, 11 September 2008 · Guida Sicilia on the 2015 arrest and Gazzetta del Sud on the 2022 judgment
Facts and claims
- claimed A court has found that the 2014 fires were set by hand: on 25 March 2022 the Tribunale di Patti sentenced a local resident, then 33, to six years on twelve counts of arson, damage followed by fire and fraud, and his father to a year and six months for one fire and aggravated fraud to obtain public funds; the charge of causing public alarm had lapsed. It was a first-instance judgment. Source: messina.gazzettadelsud.it (archived)
- claimed In March 2015 the Carabinieri placed the son under house arrest. The inquiry, run by the Patti prosecutors, found that fires between 20 July and 8 October 2014 had been set by him with his father's complicity; the father had become president of the residents' committee that sought public aid for those affected. Video recordings reportedly backed the investigators' suspicions. Source: guidasicilia.it (archived)
- claimed For the first series of fires, LiveSicilia reported in 2008 (citing Corriere Magazine) that the case had ended with the magistracy's archiving it in 2007 as “un fenomeno di natura dolosa e umana” (a deliberate, human phenomenon). Source: livesicilia.it (archived)
- documented Prime Minister's ordinance no. 3428 of 29 April 2005 records that at Canneto, since October 2004, there had been a recrudescence of “fenomeni elettrici anomali e connessi principi d'incendio” in numerous homes. It charged Sicily's regional civil protection department with monitoring and with the studies needed to find their causes, and had the national department use the “Gruppo interistituzionale di lavoro per l'osservazione dei fenomeni di Canneto”, with the collaboration of the Navy and the Air Force, allotting €250,000 from each fund. Source: gazzettaufficiale.it (archived)
- claimed L'Espresso reported in October 2007 that the group's fourth confidential report, delivered in September 2007 and coordinated by Francesco Mantegna Venerando, the Sicilian civil protection coordinator, attributed the fires to artificial electromagnetic emissions (microwave beams between 300 MHz and a few GHz, from an unlocated source at sea) and ranked secret military technology and UFOs as possible sources. It quotes the report: “Tecnologie militari evolute anche di origine non terrestre potrebbero esporre in futuro intere popolazioni a conseguenze indesiderate”. Source: lespresso.it (archived)
- claimed According to L'Espresso, the dossier also gathered Sicilian UFO sightings with photographs, renderings of the objects made by the group, and residents' statements that luminous flying objects had visited for two years; it extended the inquiry to 309 episodes along the Tyrrhenian coast and in the Sicilian Channel. Source: lespresso.it (archived)
Connected files
Organizations
- Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare) (investigated by) — Ordinance 3428 of 2005 had the study group work with the Navy and the Air Force
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