At least 51 people have been killed in forest fires ravaging central and southern Chile, the deadliest tragedy of the last decade in the country, and whose death toll is likely to rise further on Sunday.
“In the space of a minute, we lost everything,”
declared, collapsed in tears, Luis Vial, a 69-year-old retiree, in front of the rubble of his house, in the Villa Independencia district, where 19 people were killed. perished, on the hills of the tourist region of Valparaiso.
After a lull, fires have resumed in this region, where the famous seaside resort of Viña del Mar is located, whose beaches are popular during this period of the southern summer marked by scorching temperatures.
The number of victims continues to climb.
The forensic medicine service had already recorded 45 deaths, but
“six other people died in medical establishments
,” Manuel Monsalve, undersecretary at the Interior Ministry, said on Saturday.
For hours, Rosana Avendaño, a 63-year-old kitchen helper, feared the worst for her husband, alone in their house in El Olivar, a neighborhood in Viña del Mar.
“It was terrible because I couldn’t go back”
home, she told AFP.
When
“the fire arrived
, ”
“my husband was lying in bed and he started to feel the heat of the fire and he ran away
,” she reported, relieved that her husband was able to escape the flames with their pet.
But
“we lost everything
,” she added.
In addition to the human losses, between 3,000 and 6,000 homes were damaged or destroyed by the deadliest forest fires of the last decade in Chile, according to the undersecretary.
From the La Moneda palace in Santiago, President Gabriel Boric, who flew over the disaster by helicopter, announced that the number of victims would
“increase”
given the
“dimension” that
“the tragedy”
took
, which also devastated 43,000 hectares of forest, particularly on the Pacific coast.
“This is an unprecedented disaster, the Valparaiso region has never experienced a situation of this magnitude
,” declared Macarena Ripamonti, mayor of Viña del Mar.
Violent winds fanned the flames and a pall of black smoke covered the streets, where explosions followed one another, AFP journalists noted.
The authorities introduced a nighttime curfew and new calls for evacuations were made.
Around thirty outbreaks remained active out of a total of 92 fires recorded, and firefighters were trying to put them out using helicopters and planes.
In the hills of Valparaiso, where the streets are littered with hundreds of charred cars, thousands of people discovered their destroyed homes on Saturday morning.
“It was hell, explosions.
I tried to help my neighbor turn off his car, my house was starting to burn from behind.
It was a rain of ashes
,” Rodrigo Pulgar, a driver who lost his house in El Olivar, told AFP.
Firefighters have been fighting tirelessly since Friday against dozens of homes in the regions of Valparaiso and O'Higgins in the center, but also Maule, Biobio, La Araucania and Los Lagos, in the south.
“The priority is the fires in the Valparaiso region, due to their proximity to urban areas
,” said Interior Minister Carolina Toha.
These are areas located between 80 and 120 km northwest of Santiago, rich in wine, agricultural and forestry businesses.
President Boric declared a state of emergency on Friday in order to
“have all the necessary means”
in the face of the progression of the fires.
“A rain of burning ashes”
“We received an alert on the cell phone and a rain of burning ashes began to fall
,” Yvonne Guzman confided earlier, reached by telephone by AFP.
This 63-year-old woman, who abandoned her home in Quilpué, a town located 90 kilometers northeast of Santiago, found herself stranded for several hours in her car, with her nonagenarian mother-in-law.
Since Wednesday, the temperature has been close to 40 degrees in central Chile and the capital Santiago.
“These episodes are more and more recurrent, which is why we see historic temperature records every year
,” Pablo Lobos Stephani, in charge of fire protection at the Chilean channel, explained to CNN. Chilean national forestry office CONAF.
This heatwave resulting from the El Niño climatic phenomenon is currently affecting the southern cone of Latin America, in the middle of summer, causing forest fires worsened by global warming.
After Chile and Colombia, the heat wave threatens Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil in the coming days.