At least 99 people are dead and hundreds are missing, authorities said Sunday, days after devastating wildfires ripped through Chile's Pacific coast, destroying entire neighborhoods and trapping people fleeing by car. He warned that the death toll could rise sharply.
President Gabriel Bolić on Sunday described wildfires in the Valparaíso region as the country's worst disaster since the 2010 earthquake killed more than 400 people. “We know it's going to increase,” he said. 1.5 million people died and were displaced.
The president, who visited the fire zone, said, “We are standing before a tragedy of unfathomable proportions,'' and the entire nation expressed two days of mourning. He said the first priority was to recover the victims' bodies.
Thousands of homes have been destroyed in a fire fanned by strong winds that has ripped through the hilly villages around the resort town of Viña del Mar since Friday.
The fire broke out in the city of Viña del Mar, with a population of about 330,000 people, many of whom were on summer vacation, and later ravaged the smaller neighboring cities of Quilpue, Limache and Villa Alemana. In some hilly areas, many elderly residents were unable to escape.
Omar Castro Vazquez, whose home was destroyed in the El Olival community, said an elderly neighbor died in the fire.
“It was more like a nuclear bomb than a fire. There was nothing left,” said Castro Vazquez, 72.
The damage in the Valparaíso region comes as dozens of fires are burning across south-central Chile amid warmer-than-normal temperatures for this time of year, authorities said.
Several other countries in South America are also struggling to contain wildfires. Dozens of fires have broken out in Colombia in recent weeks, including in and around the capital Bogota, as the country has experienced dry weather. Firefighters are also battling blazes in Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina.
A cyclical climate phenomenon known as El Niño has exacerbated drought and high temperatures in parts of the continent, creating conditions that experts say are more likely to cause forest fires.
On Friday, the Valparaiso wildfire accelerated toward the coast as winds picked up.
The fire tore through an area about 90 miles northwest of the capital, Santiago, raging through the hills of Viña del Mar and hitting smaller neighboring cities such as Quilpue, Limache and Villa Alemana.
Several fires that also threatened the port city of Valparaiso continued to burn into Friday night. Authorities began assessing the extent of the damage on Saturday.
Chile's Interior Minister Carolina Toja said on Sunday that authorities were able to help firefighters extinguish hot spots and rescue workers reach charred areas and recover bodies as conditions improved, including cooler temperatures, higher humidity and less wind. He said he hopes it will help remove the .
At dawn Sunday, a band of smoke clung to the hillsides above Viña del Mar. Along highways to the coast, embankments and bridges were burnt, and tree stumps smoldered on hillsides. The remains of incinerated cars littered the road.
Early signs indicated flaws in evacuation orders, which some residents said may have contributed to the number of casualties.
Photos posted on social media platform Comparisons have been made to the failed evacuation during the Lahaina fire.
Chile's national disaster response agency, Senapredo, said a warning had been in effect since Friday and had issued evacuation orders for residents, but not orders to leave.
Regina Figueroa, 53, who lives in the Villa Independencia settlement on the outskirts of Viña del Mar, said she received a cell phone alert on Friday informing her of an evacuation order when the fire was already approaching her home. Told.
“I received an alert,” she said. “And then I ran out into the street. When I got out on the street, there was already flames blazing in the corner.”
Figueroa said she went to pick up her 5-year-old grandson. The flames were so close that she felt the heat as she ran. She said she stopped the crying boy and submerged him in the pool to cool off, then continued up her stairs to escape.
“The sky was pitch black,” she said. “You couldn't see anything. Everyone was screaming, shouting instructions, crying into the wind.”
She reached the top of the stairs, stopped to catch her breath, and sobbed.
“I couldn't believe we were alive. But we were lucky,” she said. “I lost my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. They could not escape the flames and died of calcification on the street.”
Several blocks of Villa Independencia were destroyed in the fire.
In El Olívar, residents evacuated to a local square when cell phone alarms went off, Castro Vázquez said.
He said black smoke rose over the hill from a botanical garden on the other side of the hill, and within minutes their community was engulfed in tall orange flames.
Another resident, Andres Calderon, 40, said some of his neighbors didn't want to leave their homes for fear of being robbed by thieves.
Calderon said when he received the alert, he jumped into his car and drove through smoke so thick he had to turn on his headlights.
“It was like hell,” Calderon said. “The wind nearly sent my car off the road and I couldn't see in front of me. I just kept driving.”
By Sunday, the area, a mix of decades-old public housing and improvised housing, was reduced to rubble. Both sides of the road were covered with corrugated metal sheets, piles of rubble, everything was black and the smell of smoke was in the air.
Castro Vazquez, a former longshoreman, said he lost his clothes, belongings, documents and some of his pension, which he had withdrawn and kept in cash.
Residents worked together to remove debris and burnt appliances from the shell of their homes.
“I never cried and I couldn't accept it. I'm focused on cleaning my house and my neighbor's house,” Castro Vazquez said. “We're broken.”
Police and coroners began arriving in the hills surrounding Viña del Mar on Sunday afternoon. Police waded through the rubble and asked local residents if they had seen any bodies.
Some survivors said they saw people two stories high being engulfed by flames. Some people said they saw bodies strewn on the stairs.
Many residents of the settlement said they were stranded with no help or information after their cellphone batteries died and the power went out. They said the response to the disaster was largely left to them. Many said the shelters set up for evacuees were too far away to be useful.
In the Las Praderas area, some survivors took shelter in the shade while others scavenged through the remains of twisted homes. Taxis handed out bottled water and empanadas as first-year medical students treated minor injuries.
Viña del Mar Mayor Macarena Ripamonti said at a press conference Sunday morning that 372 people were missing in the city as of Saturday night. He said authorities would try to ensure that the bodies of those killed in the fire were removed as soon as possible.
“They are our neighbors, our family, our friends, the people of Viña del Mar. That's what motivates people,” she said. “People are surviving the worst of the situation.”
Natalie Alcoba I contributed a report from Buenos Aires.
