This summer, two separate parts of our area were affected by strings of suspicious fires.

Many of the fires set in Waterloo may have been solved, as a 31-year-old man was arrested this week for seven counts of arson.

The other series of fires remains unsolved.

“The investigation is ongoing,” Wellington County OPP Const. Marylou Schwindt said Thursday.

“It is a difficult investigation, but our detectives are quite committed to it.”

The fires set in Wellington County this summer were part of a larger set of fires stretching back to September 2016.

All told, there have been more than 20 suspicious fires in that area – primarily around Guelph/Eramosa and Puslinch, but also stretching into Guelph, Centre Wellington and other jurisdictions.

No arrests have been made.

Schwindt says the investigation is complicated by multiple factors, including the fires being set in remote areas – making it unlikely for there to have been any witnesses – and that some potential evidence was destroyed by the fires themselves.