With 51 deaths confirmed so far and fears that the number will skyrocket in the coming hours, Chile is fighting the deadliest wave of fires in its recent history and its biggest emergency since the 2010 earthquake and is preparing for a difficult night in the central region of Valparaíso, where the flames advance without respite.
(Also read: Emergency in Chile: 51 fatalities due to devastating fires | Images)
“After the 2010 earthquake (which left 525 dead and thousands injured), the forest fires in Valparaíso “They will be the emergency situation that has generated the most victims in Chile in recent times”The Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, said in a press conference.
At the stroke of midnight and in the last official report, the minister warned that the number of deaths could be “much higher” as the hours went by: “We still have a large part of the territory that is not accessible, consequently we cannot we have a complete survey of victims,” he added.
The mayor of Viña del Mar, one of the cities most affected by the fire, said minutes before that the Municipality manages a provisional registry of 372 missing people, which does not imply that all of them are dead but does give an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy.
“Serious antecedents of intentionality”
The fires began on Friday morning and spread quickly due to the unusually high temperatures in the region, intense wind gusts of up to 60 kilometers per hour and low humidity.
Although Chile has experienced one of the rainiest winters in the last 15 years, specialists have been warning for months that the drought has not been eradicated and that there is a high probability that fine, dead vegetation will develop in the central-southern area. easy to burn, to which is added the impact of a forestry model based on the monoculture of pine and eucalyptus.
“The eucalyptus is not even a native species, which sucks up all the water. We are tired of saying that we want to cut them down,” Elba Concepción, a retired teacher whose home on a hill in Viña del Mar known as Lomas de Chorrillos, told EFE. “he was saved by a miracle.”
According to the National Forestry Corporation, there are at least eight active fires currently in the Valparaíso region, 100 kilometers east of the capital, four of which are of particular concern due to their virulence and their proximity to densely populated areas.
EFE
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