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At least 112 people have died as a result of the fierce wildfires in central Chile as of Sunday. President Gabriel Boric had issued a warning that the death toll will “significantly” increase as rescue crews searched through devastated neighbourhoods.
With temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) over the weekend, firefighters continued to battle flames in the popular seaside town of Valparaiso. This was all during a severe July heatwave.
Rosana Avendano, a sixty-three-year-old kitchen helper, was not at home when the fire started to spread around Vina del Mar, the coastal community where she and her spouse reside.
“I was unable to get home, which made it awful. This place was completely destroyed when the fire broke out,” Avendano told AFP.
“My spouse was resting down when he felt the heat of the fire approaching and rushed away.”
She spent hours fearing the worst, but in the end she managed to get in touch with him.
Lilian Rojas, a 67-year-old retiree, told AFP that not a single house remained in he neighbourhood near the Vina del Mar botanical park, which was also devastated by the fire.
The organisation in charge of processing victims’ remains announced on Sunday afternoon that it had “taken in 99 people, 32 of whom were identified.”
Speaking earlier, Boric listed 64 persons as having been displaced from Quilpue, a destroyed hillside town close to Vina del Mar, but he indicated the figure was “going to rise.
“He went on to warn, “We know it is going to increase significantly,” calling it the greatest tragedy to strike the nation since a 2010 earthquake and tsunami that claimed 500 lives.
Street-level dead victims in Chile Wildfires:
After flying over the impacted region in a helicopter on Saturday afternoon, Boric proclaimed a state of emergency and promised government support to assist residents in getting back on their feet.
As of Sunday, around 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) have burnt in the central and southern areas, according to SENAPRED, the national disaster service.
Approximately 1,400 firemen, 1,300 military troops, and volunteers are battling the fire with the assistance of 31 firefighting aircraft and aeroplanes.
As of Sunday morning, firefighters were fighting 34 fires, with 43 others under control, according to SENAPRED head Alvaro Hormazabal.
According to Hormazabal, “conditions related to the weather will remain complex.”The authorities put in place a curfew that began at 9:00 pm on Saturday (0000 GMT on Sunday), and hundreds of residents in the impacted districts were told to leave their homes.
Blocks of homes that had burnt down over the course of Friday and Saturday were visible to AFP reporters in the mountains surrounding Vina del Mar.Covered in sheets, a few of the deceased were observed laying on the road.
Inferno in Chile:
Source: National Geographic/ Chile Whidfire
Due to a massive mushroom cloud of smoke impairing vision, officials were compelled to restrict the route on Friday that connects the Valparaiso region to Santiago, the capital, which is around 1.5 hours distant, due to the fires that have been raging for days.
Photographs shared on the internet by stranded drivers showed burning mountains near the terminus of the well-known “Route 68” that leads to the Pacific coast.
The weekend fires are “without a doubt” the deadliest fire incident in Chilean history, according to Interior Minister Carolina Toha.
El Olivar resident Rodrigo Pulgar told AFP, “This was an inferno.” “I made an effort to assist my neighbour because my house was beginning to fire behind us. It rained ash.”
Pope Francis, who was born in nearby Argentina, asked for prayers for the “dead and wounded in the devastating fires in Chile” during his Sunday speech.
El Nino weather phenomena is causing a summer warmth and dryness in southern South America, which is fueling the fires. Experts caution that if global warming continues, intense heat waves and wildfires will become increasingly frequent.
With almost 3,000 hectares of land burned since January 25 in Argentina’s Los Alerces National Park—known for its natural beauty and biodiversity—fire crews fear that the rising temperatures could swallow up much more of the continent.
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