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Wildfires that swept through central and southern Chile on Sunday left at least 18 people dead, burned thousands of hectares of forest and destroyed hundreds of homes, authorities said, as the South American country was ravaged by a heat wave.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric declared a state of emergency in the inland region of Biobio and the neighboring region of Ñuble, about 500 kilometers south of Santiago, the capital.
The designation of emergency officials allows the suspension of constitutional rights and greater cooperation with the military to control more than a dozen active wildfires that have burned 8,500 hectares (21,000 acres), according to the National Forest Service.
At a press conference in the hard-hit town of Concepcion in the Biobio region, Boric expressed his support for the victims and warned that the government’s initial reports of 18 people dead and 300 houses destroyed were expected to rise as the scale of losses began to mount.
He estimated the total number of homes affected in the Biobio region alone “definitely more than 1,000, so far.”
“The first important thing, as you know, in these emergencies is always to fight and put out the fire. But we will never forget, at any time, that there are human tragedies here, families suffering,” he said. “These are difficult times.”
His speech followed complaints by local authorities that for hours on Sunday as the fires ravaged the hills and forced 50,000 people to evacuate, destruction was everywhere and aid was not available.
“Dear President Boric, from the bottom of my heart, I have been here for four hours, the community is burning and there is nothing. [government] presence,” Rodrigo Vera, mayor of the small coastal town of Penco in the Biobio region, said on a local radio station on Sunday.
Firefighters are struggling to put out the blaze, with heat and strong winds hampering their efforts. Temperatures dropped to a low of 38 C on Sunday, and the hot weather was expected to continue until Monday.
“The weather conditions for the coming hours are not good and show high temperatures,” said Interior Minister Alvaro Elizalde.
Residents say that the fire scared them after midnight, and they were locked in their houses.
“Many people did not go out. They stayed in their houses because they thought that the fire would stop at the edge of the forest,” said John Guzman, 55, inspecting the scene in Penco, where smoke covered the sky due to orange darkness. “It was completely out of control. Nobody expected it.”
“We ran away, with the children, in the dark,” said Juan Lagos, 52, also from Penco. The fire burned most of the city, burned cars, a school and a church.
Burnt bodies were found in fields, houses, roads and cars.
“From our point of view, there are people who died … and we knew them well,” said Victor Burboa, 54. “Everybody here knew them.”
Wildfires ravage central and southern Chile every summer, often peaking in February as temperatures rise and the country continues to reel from a perennial drought. In 2024, wildfires raging along the central coast of Chile killed at least 130 people, making it the world’s deadliest natural disaster since the devastating 2010 earthquake.
Neighboring Argentina has also struggled to contain wildfires that have consumed thousands of hectares of forest in recent weeks as southern Patagonia grapples with hot, dry weather.
