Chile wildfire death toll climbs as president rushes to disaster area

Buenos Aires [Argentina], February 5: The death toll from intense forest fires raging in central Chile has risen to 65 and is expected to keep climbing, Valparaíso regional Governor Rodrigo Mundac said on Sunday, as President Gabriel Boric travelled to the disaster zone and met with victims.
"The most important thing now is to save lives and put out the fires," Boric said, offering his support to victims at a hospital in the city of Viña del Mar.
The number of dead and injured is expected to rise significantly, Interior Minister Carolina Toha said.
"We have a lot of preliminary and not yet officially confirmed information that indicates that we will reach much higher numbers," he said, adding that more than 300 people were still missing.
The minister described it as likely the worst emergency in the South American country since an earthquake in 2010, when more than 520 people lost their lives.
On Sunday, the forestry authority registered 159 fires across the country, covering an area totalling almost 28,000 hectares. Thousands of houses were damaged or destroyed, more than 3,000 in the Valparaíso region alone, said Toha.
The region west of the capital Santiago, where according to the government around 1.8 million people live, is the worst affected by the fires. Near the coastal towns of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, a fire had spread to an area of around 9,600 hectares.
President Boric declared a state of emergency in the affected areas on Friday in order to mobilize resources. He has now instructed the Defence Ministry to deploy more military units.
A curfew has been imposed on some communities to facilitate fire-fighting and rescue operations.
The interior minister said the government had "serious information" that the fire near Valparaíso was started deliberately. Further south in the Maule region, a person had been detained for causing a fire while working with a welding machine. In summer in the Southern Hemisphere, severe forest fires are a frequent occurrence. Last year, more than 425,000 hectares of land burned in the centre and south of Chile. At least 26 people lost their lives.
Source: Qatar Tribune