Penco, Chile | AFP
Uncontrolled wildfires tore through communities in southern Chile, leaving charred ruins in their wake and at least 19 dead, authorities said, announcing the latest toll on Sunday.
More than 50,000 people have been displaced by blazes burning for two days now in the Nuble and Biobio regions about 500 kilometers (300 miles) south of Santiago, fanned by strong winds and hot weather.
“At 2:30 in the morning, the fire was out of control. There was a whirlwind of fire that consumed the houses in the town below,” Matias Cid, a 25-year-old student in Penco, told AFP.
“We had to leave with the shirts on our back. If we had stayed another 20 minutes we would have burned to death,” he said.
Video of the aftermath shows a bleak, empty cityscape of charred homes and burned-out pick-up trucks and cars.
Most of the fatalities from the wildfires in the region have so far been in Penco, Mayor Rodrigo Vera said.
In neighboring Lirquen, a small port town of about 20,000, the scene was equally devastating, with residents describing how the fire advanced “in seconds.”
Many of the residents “were saved from the fire because they ran to the beach,” Alejandro Arredondo, 57, told AFP. “Nothing was left standing.”
In the town of Lirquen, soldiers were patrolling the streets as night fell on Sunday.
Despite a curfew, some residents armed with flashlights continued working to clear debris or put out fires.
‘Very difficult’
President Gabriel Boric declared a state of emergency in Nuble and Biobio as nearly 4,000 firefighters battled the wildfires — raging during the high temperatures of the southern hemisphere summer.
The order allows for the deployment of the armed forces to assist.
The president traveled to the badly impacted city of Concepcion to oversee the firefighting efforts.
Boric announced a nighttime curfew in the most affected towns, warning, “conditions are very difficult.”
He returned to Santiago in the evening, pledging to meet with president-elect Jose Antonio Kast on Monday to share information about the forest fires.
“In difficult times, Chile is united. Our government and the president-elect will work together,” he said.
More heat and wind
Alicia Cebrian, the director of the National Service for Disaster Prevention and Response, said most of the evacuations were in the Biobio towns of Penco and Lirquen, which have a combined population of around 60,000 people.
The weather forecast Sunday was bad for firefighters — high temperatures and strong winds, said Esteban Krause, the head of a forest preservation agency in Biobio.
Wildfires have severely impacted south-central Chile in recent years amid growing signs of the impact of climate change in the South American country, including extreme weather, droughts and floods.
In February 2024, several fires broke out simultaneously near the city of Vina del Mar, northwest of Santiago, resulting in 138 deaths, according to the public prosecutor’s office.
About 16,000 people were affected by those fires, authorities said.
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