South of Toulouse, an Orange relay antenna burned, communications disrupted La Dépêche, April 2, 2022
Conversations via the mobile network remain disrupted in the south of Toulouse. An Orange relay antenna burned down in the night from Wednesday to Thursday in Carbonne. A criminal act. The gendarmerie has opened an investigation.
The fire, which probably broke out in the middle of the night, did not alert anyone. However, on Thursday morning, when an Orange technician went to the site, in Carbonne, south of Toulouse, he found that the installations had been destroyed by fire. A 5G relay antenna destroyed like others before it. And since then, despite the efforts made by the operator to divert communications to other relay points, communications remain difficult, especially in the communes of Carbonne and Marquefage.
Alerted, the gendarmerie sent its criminal investigation technicians to try to find traces left by the perpetrators. An investigation was opened, entrusted to the Muret company in collaboration with a unit of the Toulouse research section that had been activated in the fall of 2020 when the damage had accelerated, notably in Pechebusque and Flourens, but also in the Tarn and Aude.
More recently, at the end of February, in the night of 25 to 26, an antenna used by both Bouygues Telephone, Free and SFR was targeted by arson in Lacroix-Falgarde. This disrupted the cell phone relays but also the distribution of video including DTT by TDF, télédiffusion de France.
Since 2020, especially during the first lockdown, several towers have burned in Toulouse and Haute-Garonne. The various investigations, entrusted to the judicial police or the gendarmerie, which even had a national unit that tried to coordinate the investigations, have never identified the people responsible for these acts in the department. The cost of these arsons amounts to several hundred thousand euros.
Very “diverse” arsonists
Who are behind these actions? The arnacho-libertarian versus ecologist movement, which exchanges via internet the good practices to destroy these installations, is often pointed out by the investigation or intelligence services. But the cases that have led to arrests far from Toulouse have also held some surprises. In the Jura, environmentalists who were not militant were arrested in 2020. And in September, in the Rhône, two monks aged 39 and 40 belonging to a convent affiliated to a fundamentalist Catholic movement were arrested. They wanted to protect the inhabitants against the waves that are “harmful to health”.
For the cell phone users in the south of Haute-Garonne, Orange who diverted the communications to other relays is working to repair the damage observed in Carbonne.
South of Toulouse, an Orange relay antenna burned, communications disrupted