Firefighters at a fire in Purén, Chile, on February 4, 2023. JAVIER TORRES (AFP)
In just five days, a wave of wildfires in south-central Chile devastated an area equivalent to the average normally burned in two years. The hectares destroyed by the fire in the past three weeks exceeds 450,000 hectares, according to the morning tally released this Saturday by the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (Senapred). The fire emergency is the deadliest on record in the South American country in the past decade, killing 25 people. As nearly 6,000 firefighters and brigade members struggle to battle the still-active blazes, prosecutors have turned to investigate the origin of the blazes. At least 44 people have been arrested for their alleged responsibility for the tragedy.
There are 224 developing wildfires nationwide. Of these, 26 are in combat, 159 are controlled, 28 are extinct, and 11 are under observation. The hardest hit areas, where Gabriel Boric’s government has declared a constitutional state of emergency to deal with the emergency, are: Ñuble, Biobío and La Araucanía (400, 500 and 700 kilometers south of Santiago, respectively). Of the slightly more than 7,500 victims, 5,855 are from Biobío. “The fire is much less aggressive and many fire sources that develop can be controlled,” Interior Secretary Carolina Tohá said this week, warning that weather conditions will become more complex starting this Sunday.
As local and foreign public and private aid has reached the hardest-hit areas, debate has focused on the origin of the blazes. The National Forestry Corporation (Conaf) reported this week that about 41% of the surveyed wildfires in Biobío, La Araucanía and Ñuble during this season (starting in July 2022) were caused intentionally. At the national level, intentionality is 25%. One of the sectors hardest hit by the fire wave was agriculture.
The national head of the Conaf Forest Fire Prevention Department, Rolando Pardo, explained that the main reasons were financial reasons or to cause damage. However, he clarified that the X-ray should be done by region. “For example, in La Araucanía, the territorial conflict [por las tierras ancestrales del pueblo mapuche] is there, but there is also revenge and anger between communities or anger with the agricultural world,” he stressed.
Agriculture Minister Esteban Valenzuela reported that two thirds of those affected are users of the Institute for Agricultural Development (INDAP, dedicated to the forces of small agricultural producers and farmers), 45% are women and 26% are Mapuche between Ñuble and Araucanía. 70% of those affected are people on low incomes. Valenzuela assured that the government had doubled the units investigating the origin of the fires: from 12 to 24, consisting of two technicians and specialists per region.
Chile’s three right-wing Vamos parties met with prosecutor Ángel Valencia to ask him to place special emphasis on “a high level of intent” in his investigations into the fires. Right-wing Senator Javier Macaya, president of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) party, announced that Congress would also seek to sanction any “political accountability”.
It has been clarified by the Regional Public Prosecutor’s Office of Biobío, Valencia, that they will not provide any figures in relation to intent and negligence. “We will not do this out of responsibility. We’re investigating all the hypotheses, there’s a history of fires caused intentionally and negligently,” he said. The national prosecutor reported on the formation of a special team to coordinate the fires in the so-called southern macro-zone, where computer resources and criminal analysis are used to “consider all southern zone fires as a major criminal event”.
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