Deaths from Chile wildfires climb to 112
The death toll from central Chile’s devastating wildfires climbed to at least 112 people on Sunday, after President Gabriel Boric warned that this number would rise “significantly” as teams search gutted neighborhoods.
Responders continued to battle fires in the coastal tourist region of Valparaiso amid an intense summer heat wave, with temperatures soaring to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) over the weekend.
Abraham Mardones, a welder who fled his burning home in Viña del Mar, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) he narrowly escaped the fast-paced inferno that raged over a hillside last Friday and through several blocks of the seaside city.
“We looked out again and the fire was already on our walls. It took only 10 minutes. The entire hill burned,” he said.
“The fire consumed everything — memories, comforts, homes. I was left with nothing but my overalls and a pair of sneakers that were given to me as a gift,” Mardones added. “I could only rescue my dog.”
Upon his return on Sunday, he said he found several neighbors who had died in the flames.
Friends passed by driving a truck “carrying the burned bodies of their brother, their father, their daughter.”
The Interior Ministry said on Sunday night the medical examiner’s office had received 112 dead victims, 32 of whom had been
identified, and that there were 40 fires still active in the country.
Speaking earlier in Quilpue, a devastated hillside community near Viña del Mar, Boric said the death toll was 64, but “we know it is going to increase significantly.”
The blazes were the country’s deadliest disaster since an earthquake and tsunami killed 500 people in 2010, he added.
Viña del Mar Mayor Macarena Ripamonti told reporters that “190 people are still missing” in the city.
Dead victims on the streets
Boric, who met with fire survivors at a hospital in Viña del Mar on Sunday, has declared a state of emergency, pledging government support to help people get back on their feet.
The Chilean National Disaster Prevention and Response Service, or Senapred, said nearly 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) had been burned across the country’s central and southern regions by Sunday.
Supported by 31 firefighting helicopters and airplanes, some 1,400 firefighters, 1,300 military personnel and volunteers are combating the flames.
Noting the dozens of blazes still burning out of control, Senapred chief Alvaro Hormazabal said weather “conditions are going to continue to be complicated.”
Authorities have imposed a curfew, while thousands in the affected areas were ordered to evacuate their homes.
In the hillsides around Viña del Mar, AFP reporters saw entire blocks of houses that were burned out.
Some of the dead were seen lying on the road, covered by sheets.
The fires, which have been raging for days, forced authorities last Friday to close the road linking the Valparaiso region to the capital Santiago, about 1.5 hours 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.
Interior Minister Carolina Toha said the weekend blazes had been “without a doubt” the deadliest fire event in Chile’s history.
During his Sunday address, Pope Francis, a native of neighboring Argentina, called for prayers for the “dead and wounded in the devastating fires in Chile.”
The fires are being driven by a summer heat wave and drought affecting the southern part of South America caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon, as scientists warn that a warming planet has increased the risk of natural disasters such as intense heat and fires.