Death toll mounts from Chile blazes
TRAGEDY: BODIES LIE IN ROADS AS 40 WILDFIRES BURN
Entire blocks of houses gutted as emergency declared.
The death toll from central Chile’s blazing wildfires climbed to at least 112 people on Sunday, after President Gabriel Boric warned the number would rise “significantly” as teams search gutted neighbourhoods.
Responders continued to battle fires in the coastal tourist region of Valparaiso amid an intense summer heat wave, with temperatures soaring to 40oC over the weekend.
Abraham Mardones, a welder who fled his burning home in Vina del Mar, said he narrowly escaped the fast-paced inferno that raged over a hillside on 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. I was left with nothing but my overalls and a pair of sneakers,” Mardones said.
Upon his return on Sunday, he said he found several neighbours 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 late on Sunday that the medical examiner’s office had received 112 dead victims, 32 of whom have been identified, and that there are 40 fires still active in the country.
Speaking earlier in Quilpue, a devastated hillside community near Vina del Mar, Boric had said the death toll was 64 but “we know it is going to increase significantly” .
Vina del Mar mayor Macarena Ripamonti told reporters “190 people are still missing” in the city.
“Not a single house was left here,” retiree Lilian Rojas, 67, said of her neighbourhood near the
Vina del Mar botanical garden, which was also destroyed.
Boric, who met fire survivors at a Vina del Mar hospital on Sunday, has declared a state of emergency, pledging government support to help people get back on their feet.
According to national disaster service Senapred, nearly 26 000 hectares had been burned across the 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.
Senapred chief Alvaro Hormazabal, noting the dozens of blazes still burning out of control, said weather “conditions 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 Vina del Mar, entire blocks of houses were burned out. Some of the dead were lying on the road, covered by sheets.