(Concepción) Firefighters and international experts began Monday to fight, alongside Chilean forces, the fires that have been ravaging the center of the country for several days and have left 26 people dead, hundreds injured and more than a week destroyed. a thousand houses.
According to a latest report on Monday from the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (SENAPRED), the fires have since Thursday killed 26 people, injured 1,260 and left 3,000 people homeless. At least 1,159 homes were destroyed by the flames.
The fires, which have ravaged 270,000 hectares so far, could after a relative calm start again from Tuesday due to a “weather alert” for extreme heat in the regions of Maule and Ñuble.
“In five days, we had a burned area equivalent to what is usually burned in two years of fires,” said Interior Minister Carolina Toha at a press conference.
Chileans are experiencing a summer with record temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius in some areas.
PHOTO JUAN GONZALEZ, REUTERS
Firefighters taking a break near Santa Juana, February 5
“We are trying to supply the whole community here with water and basic products,” Carmen Cuevas, a volunteer from the city of Santa Juana, one of the most affected in the Biobio region, told AFP. 500 km south of the capital Santiago, saying she was moved to see her city “reduced to ashes”.
Some 5,600 firefighters and agents of the National Forestry Corporation (CONAF) are battling 69 fires on Monday out of the 280 still in progress. International aid is beginning to arrive, however, with the entry into action of the American DC-10 “Ten Tanker” aircraft, capable of dropping 36,000 liters of water.
PHOTO JUAN GONZALEZ, REUTERS
President Gabriel Boric stepping out of a DC-10 Ten Tanker
From Argentina to Portugal
On Sunday evening, another aircraft, an A330-200 from Spain, arrived with a contingent of 50 people on board, including six experts in the fight against forest fires, 38 soldiers from an intervention battalion of emergency and a team of six drone pilots.
Argentina joined the international effort by sending ten firefighters and five off-road trucks equipped with forestry equipment. Fifty other firefighters and a Chinook helicopter are expected.
A contingent of 150 forest firefighting specialists, including military and civilian personnel, also arrived from Mexico.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter that “the Chilean people can count on the support of France to fight against this scourge”.
The Chilean Foreign Ministry has announced aid also from Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay and Venezuela.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has announced that he will send a plane with equipment and experts in the fight against forest fires. “The climate crisis is burning Chile,” he said in a message on Twitter.
The Portuguese government expressed Monday its willingness to send a team of 140 soldiers.
The Chilean government has declared a state of disaster in several regions of the Center-South of the country, an agricultural and forest area where scenes of desolation are multiplying with plots reduced to ashes, animals lying lifeless and inhabitants having lost everything .