The fire has killed more than 130 people in central Chile and destroyed some 15,000 homes.
The Valparaíso area, where the Chilean Congress is based, and the spa city of Viña del Mar, one of the main tourist centers in the South American country, are devastated.
The president, Gabriel Boric, has compared the magnitude of the tragedy to the earthquake and subsequent
tsunami
of 2010, which left 521 dead and a dozen missing.
The images of the tragedy, with entire families in the streets and entire neighborhoods reduced to ashes, have shocked Chilean society today.
The death toll, the Government has already anticipated, will increase as progress is made in the removal of debris.
But the shock at the catastrophe—increased yesterday by the death in a helicopter accident of former President Sebastián Piñera in the south of the country—should not hide the fact that we are facing a tragedy that has been announced and, above all, avoidable.
Chile has been the scene of large-scale forest fires for decades.
This year, they were expected to be especially voracious, a consequence of the drought and high temperatures produced by the El Niño phenomenon.
Valparaíso and Viña el Mar did not suffer the effects of a sudden cataclysm.
The number of deaths has multiple reasons: neighborhoods built without planning on hills not suitable as urbanizable land, overcrowding, flammable materials.
The State has failed in controls and, once the scenario of a possible catastrophe was consummated, failed in alerts.
The population denounces that they were not warned sufficiently in advance of the arrival of the flames.
Others simply refused to leave their homes, fearful of losing everything to looting.
The consequence was that dozens of people could not escape the fire, trapped in the narrow streets of neighborhoods built haphazardly on the hills.
It is unacceptable that in an OECD member economy, with the level of development that this implies, a forest fire leaves more than a hundred dead.
Chile is now facing a new test of maturity.
Citizen security is today at the forefront of Chileans' concerns, as demonstrated by the different polls that are published every week as a thermometer of public opinion.
Prevention and response to a natural disaster must also be part of that concern.
At the end of the day, it's about protecting people's lives.
The State must advance, as a first step, in assisting the hundreds of victims.
It is also time to respond to allegations of intentionality behind some fire outbreaks.
If there are culprits, they must be punished.
Then will come the time for reconstruction, an invaluable opportunity to rise from the ashes without the mistakes of the past.
At the same time, the authorities must outline an ambitious prevention plan against the flames that prevents new deaths, with early warnings that are effective and arrive on time and effective evacuation plans.
Chile has already done this in the past, in its fight against earthquakes and
tsunamis
.
Chileans are sadly used to facing great natural tragedies and have demonstrated the capacity for adaptation and resilience.
Unfortunately, climate change has also become a natural phenomenon: the time has come to respond to the fire.