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 (300 miles) 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 town of Concepción in the Biobio region, Boric expressed his support for the victims and warned that the government’s initial reports of 18 people killed and 300 houses destroyed were expected to rise as the scale of losses began to take hold.
He estimated the total number of homes affected in the Biobio district alone “certainly more than a thousand, so far.”
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“The first priority, as you know, in these emergencies is always to fight and extinguish the fire. But we will not 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 no (government) present,” Rodrigo Vera, Mayor of the small coastal town of Penco in the Biobio region, said on a local radio station early Sunday. “How can the minister do anything but call me and tell me that the soldiers will arrive at a certain time?”
Firefighters are struggling to put out the blaze, with heat and strong winds hampering their efforts. Temperatures dropped to a low of 38 C (100 F) on Sunday, and the heat was expected to continue into Monday.
“The weather conditions for the coming hours are not good and show high temperatures,” said Interior Minister Álvaro Elizalde.
Residents say that the fire scared them after midnight, and they were locked in their houses.
“Many people didn’t go out. They stayed in their houses because they thought the fire would stop at the edge of the forest,” said John Guzmán, 55, inspecting the scene in Penco, where smoke covered the sky with an orange haze. “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 what we see, there are people dying… and we knew them well,” said Víctor 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.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
