still in shock from the deadly fires in Chile, these residents are already ready to rebuild everything

While the fires have killed at least 123 people in Chile, many residents discovered the damage to their homes and set about cleaning up, traumatized by these terrible last hours.

Cleaning in an apocalyptic landscape. In Chile, the death toll from the fires that hit the Valparaiso region continues to rise, with at least 123 dead. We are still recording outbreaks of fire and several outbreaks are still active in different places in the country, in the center and the south. But the mega-fire which affected the town of Viña del Mar and its surroundings is under control. However, the residents are already working to try to restore order to their land, but the memory of the terrible hours of the fire is still in everyone’s minds.

On the hills of Viña del Mar, a seaside town not far from Valparaiso, entire neighborhoods were destroyed by the flames. Judith cannot find the words to describe the landscape in front of her: dozens of houses, like those of her daughter, have been reduced to ashes. “Suddenly she saw black smoke. ‘We have to evacuate, we have to evacuate’, she said. She took her two babies, her dog, and she went out without anything else”she sighs.

“I started to cry”

Others were trapped because of the fire’s rapid arrival. “People died of panic, others of asphyxiation. I saw these people who died…”, says Miguel, shocked. Those who survived the tragedy are now working to collect the debris. Arms black with ashes and a shovel in his hands, Matias says he was not there when his house burned because he was working. It was a shock when he saw the damage. “I started to cry. It’s a house we built a long time ago.” he recalls.

“We were the ones who did everything, from the slab to the roof, it took us a lot of time.”

Matias, a resident

at franceinfo

All that remains of his house are the load-bearing walls and the blackened metal staircase on which he hung a Chilean flag. The second floor has completely disappeared: “We collect the rubble and throw it in the truck so that it takes away as much as possible. The idea is that the land is clear and clean and then we can start thinking about reconstruction…”

A “post-fire” trauma

For the moment, neither the town hall nor the regional government have intervened in this sector of Viña del Mar, because there are a lot of disaster areas. So, in the meantime, it is the inhabitants of other surrounding communities, spared by the fires, who distribute provisions and provide help, like Catalina, which was also affected by a fire in the past.

“It’s not just the fact of having lost your house, there is also the post-fire moment with all the psychological problems, she insists. It’s not something that ends here, now, it stays with you for the rest of your life.” These fires which devastated the Valparaiso region are the deadliest that the country has known.