Chile is burning. Not everything, obviously, but in the last four days the flames have already destroyed 8,500 hectares of territory in the coastal region of Valparaiso and Viña del Mar, about a hundred kilometers from the capital, taking 122 human lives. And the budget is still provisional. This would be the worst emergency faced by the country since the 2010 earthquake, when over 500 people died.
According to the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (Senapred), since last Friday the fires have also developed in other areas of the country in the middle of the austral summer, in Quilpué and Villa Alemana (1500 hectares destroyed) and in La Aguada, in the southern region of O'Higgins, where 4,253 hectares of land would have been burned.
The flames, the cause of which is being investigated, began last Friday and, despite the prompt reaction from the authorities, already alerted to the very high risk of fires in this period, they spread extremely quickly. This is due to a confluence of fatal causes, such as the exceptional temperatures of these days (an average of 36 degrees in the capital, absolutely unusual), wind gusts of up to 60 km per hour, and low humidity. At the time of writing, some outbreaks are still active in Viña del Mar.
President Gabriel Boric has decreed a state of emergency due to disaster in the Valparaiso region effective from Friday, mobilizing 1300 military units in the affected area. Furthermore, in the four municipalities affected by the flames, Quipué, Villa Alemana, Limache and Viña del Mar, a curfew was applied from 9pm to 10am to facilitate the circulation of emergency vehicles. Measure not always respected: February for Chileans is like Italian August, the holiday month par excellence, when the beaches are stormed. On Sunday, despite the curfew time having been brought forward to 6pm due to the gravity of the situation, many swimmers continued to enjoy the sand and sea on the main beaches of Viña.
While we await a second joint declaration from President Boric, together with the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá and the Minister of Defense Maya Fernandez, the government's estimates are confirmed according to which in Viña del Mar there would be over 12,122 houses damaged by fires, while in Quilpé there would be 2,701; the people victims of the damage from the flames would be over 31 thousand in Viña and just over 7,800 in Quilpuè.
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