BOTANIA’S ‘MIRACLE’: How neighbors saved their homes from Chile’s deadliest re
Quilpué, Chile, (EFE). – Despite being surrounded by /ames amid the deadly Dres that killed 132 people in Chile, the Botania neighborhood remained intact. The /ames did not touch the houses, and the neighbors managed to evacuate in time, thanks to a pioneering neighborhood prevention program with worldwide projection.
From the air, Botania, a small neighborhood in Canal Chaco, on the border between Viña de Mar and Quilpué, with about 70 multicolored houses in the province of Valparaiso, looks like an island amid charred earth, ash-blackened hills, burned trees, and the lingering smell of smoke.
Neighbors explained to EFE that what many consider a miracle is the result of intense training and cleaning, the rational management of local vegetation, and the commitment of a tight-knit community that has designed an emergency model with clear roles and responsibilities.
Facing the emergency
The neighbors of Botania fought the Dre with axes, rakes, hoes, and 18-liter water backpacks, in addition to 3,500-liter tanks located at strategic points.
These tools are part of a kit provided to the community as part of a program Dnanced by USAID, the United States Development Agency, the National Forestry Corporation (Conaf), and Caritas Chile, Rodrigo Vargas, a neighbor and coordinator of the program in Botania, explained to Efe.
The same kit was delivered to 16 other communities in Chile as part of the program.
Each community has received resources to manage the prevention programs “according to their needs and to adapt the project to their conditions,” he adds.
“We have a monitoring system, which on this occasion we were not able to connect before the emergency, a community alarm, but we also did prevention work in the Deld, such as weeding, and a communication and information delivery system,” he says.
“We try to take care of each house and the environment, moving trees away from roofs, cleaning gutters, and not having /ammable material in patios, which is key. If the gas cylinders aren’t protected, it’s over,” he explains, adding that Botania, in particular, has always been managed by the neighbors.
Vargas emphasizes that the core of the program was not only about environmental management but that “the most important thing was the strength of our community networks, working together and having a sense of belonging.”
For this kind of plan to work, the community must stay connected even when communications are down.
This happened during the February Dres, but fortunately, they were equipped with walkie-talkies to share information about the progress of the /ames, which at that hour had already consumed much of the surrounding hills of Viña del Mar.
“Nobody imagined that something like this could happen,” Estrella Barrios, a neighbor, told EFE, before emphasizing that the resources are there, but “the neighbors have to get involved.”
When participation is lacking it has a concrete result: 250 houses in Canal Chacao – out of a total of just over 1,000 – were destroyed by the Dre, almost all of them adjacent to private land where the owners refused to cut the vegetation.