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Chile is experiencing bitter days. Although the main sources of fires in urban areas that hit the south-central area of Chile, in the Valparaíso region, have been put out, the havoc left behind by this megafire is overwhelming. The data – still preliminary – indicate that 130 people lost their lives, another 100 are missing, 15,000 homes were affected and the fire burned around 55,000 hectares. What happened? Despite not being the most extensive fire that the country has experienced, since the first place is held by the one recorded in 2017 with 570,000 hectares burned, it is the one that has claimed the most human lives.
Víctor Orellana, former National Deputy Director of the National Emergency Office between 2014 and 2018, and advisor to the National Research Center for the Integrated Management of Natural Disasters (Cigiden), remembers that the 2017 fire left 11 dead. In 2023, the record was broken with 26 deaths. But this year was a profound increase: 130 people.
Understanding why Chile burns so much is a question that involves many variables. However, as professors Dolors Armenteras, from the National University of Colombia, and Francisco de la Barrera, from the University of Concepción, Chile, explained in a commentary they published last year in the journal Nature, “climate change and unsustainable land use practices are causing megafires in South America.” And Chile has not been the exception. Last week's drama was also added to the fact that it happened in a populated area.
Context: climate change
Although scientific studies will be needed to answer exactly what role climate change played in this latest fire in Chile, global warming conditions do cause fires, in general, to spread faster. “In Chile, for example, the winds are stronger, the temperatures are higher, with heat waves, and drought periods are increasing. While the number of days with less precipitation leaves the vegetation drier – and more suitable to act as fuel –, the wind makes the fire move more easily through the territory,” de la Barrera tells América Futura.
In fact, a graphic carried out by the United Nations Environment Programme, which used data from the Government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as input, shows calculations that better demonstrate this relationship. Under a scenario in which the average global temperature does not increase more than 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels (a goal sought by the Paris Agreement), there will be 41% more land surface with forest fires at the level global. If the temperature is limited to 2°C, the percentage increases to 62%, and will rise to 97% under a 3°C temperature increase scenario.
In Chile, furthermore, as Ignacio Araya, Master in Climate Change Science, Development and Policy from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, says, there has been a mega drought since 2008 that has become more forceful. “Although the rains last year were considered normal, this also contributed to the growth of more light vegetation, such as grass, which when it enters the season of little rain and dries out, it also becomes fuel.”
But as de la Barrera points out to América Futura, the magnitude of climate change is not such a completely controllable variable. And in that equation to limit fires, there was a factor that could play a determining role in the Chilean fire: poor landscape planning.
The fuel: non-native species and forest plantations
“With a climate, atmosphere and meteorological conditions that make the spread of fires more likely, the next thing is to look at what can burn,” explains the expert from the University of Concepción. And south-central Chile would seem to meet several conditions to fuel the fire. “There is a large percentage of forest plantations that are not native species, such as eucalyptus and some varieties of pine, which have a high flammability condition.”
In the south central zone of Chile, according to the article by Nature, exotic forest plantations reached 520,000 hectares by 2017, and 450,000 hectares by 2023. And many arrived there, Ayala recalls, as part of a policy of incentives of state subsidies to large forestry companies during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The problem is that, over time, several were abandoned and others expanded into native forests, practically becoming pure fuel. This, and poor landscape planning, may explain, in part, why the current fires, not only in Chile, but in much of South America, are raging so strongly.
“Although in Chile the amount of resources allocated to control fires has been increasing, almost doubling between 2017 and 2014, it is not being effective. Because? Because what is needed is an emphasis on planning the territory,” adds de la Barrera. Some of the examples she gives of how this could work is to start regulating forest plantations, limiting their extent and preventing one plantation from being followed by the other. “In the middle of these plantations, which should not be very large, agriculture and livestock can be incorporated, which are less prone to fires.”
Also, he comments, a regulation would be needed that establishes how close a city can be to these plantations. “We have to gain more kilometers of distance. We have cases in which a populated area is less than 800 meters from these forests, when the distance, at a minimum, should be about three kilometers.”
And although there is currently a bill in progress to regulate the prevention of forest and rural fires in Chile – which includes classifying the territory, according to the levels of fire occurrence, defining forest buffer zones, managing the use of fire and developing regulations of a preventive nature – de la Barrera believes that in addition to a law, greater and better decisions are required, at the landscape scale, about the forestry model.
The lack of evacuation was fatal
Orellana, former National Deputy Director of the National Emergency Office, emphasizes that the majority of fires are caused by human action, whether “negligence, accidental or intentional.” Then there is climate change, which spreads them further, and an absurd landscape, which serves as fuel. For each of these processes there must be a focus and when all this fails, alert systems to evacuate are essential.
“Since 2013, Chile has been working with the Emergency Alert System, a strategy that, in the event of different events, such as fires or tsunamis, sends an evacuation message to people's cell phones,” he says. In the case of this year's fire, something could have gone wrong, since, on other occasions, such as the fire that occurred in the town of Santa Olga in 2017, although everything burned, all the residents also managed to evacuate.
As to what happened, there is still no clear answer. Orellana has some hypotheses. The first thing, he assures, is that with fires, knowing where to evacuate is not as logical as with other disasters: the fire does not move in a single direction and the route to escape from it may not be clear. “The second thing is that the fires damaged 200 antennas and, since it is a message that comes from Santiago, we do not know if it actually reached all the people.” The third thing is that the Alert System leaves the decision in the hands of each individual and, sometimes, it is not easy to evacuate. “There are elderly or sick people who cannot be left behind or are afraid of losing their home if they do not stay there.”
As EL PAÍS had already reported, according to the president, Gabriel Boric, the alerts did arrive. “For different reasons the fire was going very fast, more than 10 kilometers per hour. “That’s faster than people walk.” However, to clarify any doubts, the president commissioned an external investigation from the European Union.
“Of course, the impact of the fires can be measured in several ways, but the loss of people's lives is the most shocking. That is the tragedy we are experiencing,” she concludes. “The learning is that this Alert System, which has been around for a few years, perhaps needs an update, or work together with other technologies, such as radio and television.” All three – climate change, the landscape and alerts – are something that, without a doubt, Chile will have to start looking at.
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