(Santa Juana) “It was hell. I don’t understand how our homes […] burned,” laments Maria Ines, still in shock, a resident of Santa Juana, in the Chilean region of Biobio, ravaged by huge forest fires.
This city, which has just been one of the epicenters of the fires which have already killed 24 people in central Chile, is mourning ten dead, including five members of the same family.
This 55-year-old social sector worker speaks of a “miracle” when referring to the houses surrounded by flames that managed to be spared.
But she is now worried about seeing the fire come back: “Imagine, without water, where are we going to take shelter? Or ? How ? “.
Some 13,000 people live in the municipality of Santa Juana, located about fifty kilometers south of Concepcion, the regional capital.
“It’s a very hilly and poorly served terrain,” said Ana Albornoz, mayor of this town, on Saturday.
“Most of the houses were destroyed because we didn’t receive any help. With air aid, we could have saved most of the homes,” laments Maria Ines.
Some of the devastated areas are particularly poor and marked by conflicts between Mapuche communities, Chile’s main indigenous people, and the Chilean state, logging companies and private individuals.
Miguel Angel Henriquez, a 58-year-old farmer from Santa Juana, told AFP that he and his wife were too late to flee.
“We waited until the end, but the fire trapped us on the roads. When we wanted to leave, we couldn’t because the flames were crossing the track”.
“He didn’t come back”
After deciding to turn back, they were blocked by fire, until they encountered firefighters and got into their truck.
It was then that “a neighbor appeared and entered the fire to get his animals. But he didn’t come back. I yelled at him to get out but he didn’t obey me,” he says.
The house of Carmen Cuevas, 49, suffered no damage. She took her vehicle to distribute water and hygiene products to her most affected neighbors.
“We are trying to supply people with water, with basic necessities, because it has affected us all”, explains this forty-year-old who says she is “very sad to see everything that has been reduced to ashes”.
Santa Juana is not the only epicenter of the fires. There is also the Purén sector, a little further south, and the Tome sector, north of Concepcion.
Social networks are full of stories of people who have lost everything. Thus, José Ankalao reports on Twitter the destruction of “70%” of his village near Purén and the “total loss” of the lands inherited from the ancestors.