Chile wildfire death toll jumps to 99, state morgue confirms
- President Gabriel Boric said the death toll would continue to rise, adding that it was country’s deadliest disaster since 2010’s earthquake and tsunami
- Authorities warned of ‘complicated’ conditions as they battled fires in the coastal region of Valparaiso. The disaster left bodies in the streets
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The confirmed death toll from wildfires raging in central Chile has climbed to 99, the national organisation in charge of managing victims’ bodies said on Sunday.
The Legal Medical Service (SML) “has taken in a total of 99 people; 32 of them identified,” the organisation said, updating a toll of 64 dead given earlier in the day by President Gabriel Boric.
Authorities warned of “complicated” conditions as they battled fires in the coastal tourist region of Valparaiso amid an intense summer heatwave, with temperatures soaring to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) over the weekend.
Rosana Avendano, a 63-year-old kitchen assistant, was away from home when the fire began to sweep through the city of Vina del Mar, where she lives with her husband.
“It was terrible because I couldn’t get [to my house]. The fire came here … we lost everything,” Avendano told Agence France-Presse.
“My husband was lying down and began to feel the heat of the fire coming and he ran away.”
She feared the worst for hours, but eventually was able to contact her spouse.
“We can sadly confirm that there are 64 deaths,” Boric said from Quilpue, outside the hard-hit city of Vina del Mar.
“The figure is going to rise. We know it is going to increase in a significant way,” he added, saying it was the country’s deadliest disaster since a 2010 earthquake and tsunami that killed 500 people.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it’: at least 19 dead in Chile forest fires
Boric has declared a state of emergency, pledging government support to help people get back on their feet after he flew over the affected area in a helicopter on Saturday afternoon.
According to the national disaster service, SENAPRED, nearly 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) had been burned across the central and southern regions by Sunday.
SENAPRED chief Alvaro Hormazabal said firefighters were battling 34 blazes as of Sunday morning, with 43 others under control.
Weather “conditions are going to continue to be complicated”, Hormazabal said.
Authorities had imposed a curfew beginning at 9pm local time on Saturday, while thousands in the affected areas were ordered to evacuate their homes.
In the hillsides around Vina del Mar, Agence France-Presse reporters saw entire blocks of houses that were burned out overnight on Friday into Saturday.
Some of the dead were seen lying on the road, covered by sheets.
The fires, blazing for days, forced authorities on Friday to close the road linking the Valparaiso region to the capital Santiago, about an hour and a half away, as a huge mushroom cloud of smoke impaired visibility.
Images posted online from trapped motorists showed mountains in flames at the end of the famous “Route 68” leading to the Pacific coast.
According to Interior Minister Carolina Toha, the weekend blazes have been “without a doubt” the deadliest fire event in Chile’s history.
“This was an inferno,” Rodrigo Pulgar, from the town of El Olivar, told Agence France-Presse. “I tried to help my neighbour … my house was starting to burn behind us. It was raining ash.”
Wildfires are not uncommon in Chile over the summer months. Last year, on the back of a record heatwave, some 27 people died and more than 400,000 hectares (990,000 acres) were affected.
The fires are being driven by a summer heatwave and drought affecting the southern part of South America caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, as scientists warn that a warming planet has increased the risk of natural disasters such as intense heat and fires.
The rising temperatures threaten to engulf more of South America, as brigades in Argentina have been fighting a fire that has consumed more than 3,000 hectares in Los Alerces National Park, famed for its beauty and biodiversity, since January 25.
“The area with fires today is much smaller than last year, [but] at this time the number of hectares affected is multiplying very rapidly,” Interior Minister Toha said.
Between Friday and Saturday, the area affected by the wildfires increased to 43,000 hectares (110,000 acres) from 30,000.
Toha said the authorities’ greatest concern was that some of the active fires were developing very close to urban areas “with the very high potential to affect people, homes and facilities”.
Additional reporting by Reuters
