The death toll from central Chile’s raging wildfires rose to at least 99 people on Sunday, with President Gabriel Boric warning that the figure might grow “significantly” as teams searched devastated areas.
Firefighters continued to battle fires in Valparaiso’s seaside tourist district despite a severe summer heat wave that saw temperatures reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) over the weekend.
Rosana Avendano, a 63-year-old kitchen helper, was not at home when the fire broke out in Vina del Mar, the seaside city where she lives with her husband.
“It was dreadful because I couldn’t get to my home. “The fire came here, and we lost everything,” Avendano told AFP.
“My husband was lying down and began to feel the heat of the fire coming and he ran away.”
She feared the worst for hours but was eventually able to reach him.
“Not a single house was left here,” retiree Lilian Rojas, 67, told AFP about her neighborhood near the Vina del Mar botanical garden, which was also destroyed by the fire.
The group in charge of managing victims’ bodies announced Sunday afternoon that it has “taken in 99 people, 32 of whom have been identified.”
Boric had previously provided a death toll of 64 people in Quilpue, a damaged hillside town near Vina del Mar, but claimed the figure was “going to rise.”
“We know it is going to increase significantly,” he said, describing it as the country’s greatest calamity since a 2010 earthquake and tsunami that killed 500.
Dead victims in the streets
Boric declared a state of emergency and promised government assistance to help residents get back on their feet after flying over the devastated area in a helicopter on Saturday afternoon.
SENAPRED, the national disaster service, reported that over 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) had been burned in the central and southern regions as of Sunday.
The fire is being fought by 1,400 firefighters, 1,300 military troops, and volunteers, who are assisted by 31 firefighting helicopters and planes.
According to SENAPRED commander Alvaro Hormazabal, firefighters were battling 34 blazes on Sunday morning, with 43 others under control.
Weather “conditions will continue to be complicated,” Hormazabal stated.
Authorities enforced a curfew starting at 9:00 p.m. Saturday (0000 GMT Sunday), and thousands of people in the impacted districts were asked to leave their homes.
AFP correspondents spotted entire blocks of burned-out residences on the hillsides around Vina del Mar on Friday and Saturday.
Some of the deceased were spotted laying on the road, covered in sheets.
‘Inferno’
The flames, which had been blazing for days, forced authorities on Friday to restrict the road connecting the Valparaiso region to Santiago, approximately 1.5 hours away, due to a massive mushroom cloud of smoke impairing visibility.
Images released online by detained motorists showed mountains in flames at the end of the famous “Route 68” that leads to the Pacific coast.
According to Interior Minister Carolina Toha, the weekend fires were “without a doubt” the deadliest in Chilean history.
“This was an inferno,” Rodrigo Pulgar, of El Olivar, told AFP. “I tried to help my neighbor. My house was beginning to burn behind us. It rained ash.”
During his Sunday message, Pope Francis, a native of neighboring Argentina, requested prayers for the “dead and wounded in the devastating fires in Chile.”
The fires are being fueled by a summer heatwave and dryness in southern South America caused by the El Nino weather phenomena, as scientists warn that a warming world increases the danger of natural disasters like high heat and fires.
Rising temperatures threaten to devour more of the continent, as brigades in Argentina have been fighting a fire that has destroyed more than 3,000 hectares of Los Alerces National Park, which is known for its beauty and biodiversity, since January 25.