Reported arson is becoming more common across Brindisi province, and the damage that follows is rising with it. Residents beyond the provincial capital have grown alarmed. The latest fire, between Tuesday and Wednesday, burned four cars parked beneath public-housing blocks on Via Alessandro Favia in Brindisi.
A long series of episodes has hit private citizens, business owners and representatives of institutions across the province. Il Sole 24 Ore’s latest crime report for Italy shows a rising trend in Brindisi on two specific indicators: fires, and damage followed by fire. From 2023 to 2025 the same area recorded 17 more individual episodes, which also produced a further 41 cases of damage, placing Brindisi ninth in Italy.
In 2023 there were 27 fires and 141 damage cases; in 2024, 40 fires and 153 damage cases; in 2025, 44 arson acts and 182 damage cases. Complaints of deliberate fires were already between 38 and 40 a year from 2019 to 2022.
The attacks often unfold too quickly for video surveillance to capture them. Flames can destroy cars within seconds and damage facades, buildings or shop entrances. Targets are not limited to cars and heavy vehicles: fires are frequently set directly against house doors or commercial premises.
The contexts vary. Some cases involve attempts to extort business owners, or organised crime trying to impose its power through fire. Others are traced to personal grudges between relatives or former partners, to control of drug-dealing areas, to revenge outside strictly criminal settings, or to direct attacks on institutions.
In 2025 Oria was hit first by a fire that destroyed two local-police cars and then by one involving the car of mayor Cosimo Ferretti. A suspected perpetrator has been identified in the mayor’s case, but the motive and any possible instigator are still unclear.
Those responsible for intimidating another mayor in the province, Giovanni Barletta of Villa Castelli, still have neither a face nor a name. That fire was on 5 May.
Investigators say a small fire-lighter placed close to tyres is often enough to start a blaze, and the flames also destroy the smallest clues, complicating the work of investigators and firefighters. A different pattern appeared a few days ago inside the vehicle depot of the waste-collection company in Fasano, where traces of flammable liquid were found in several places, making the intimidating purpose plain.