19 dead in Chile forest fires, emergency declared

At least 19 people have died in forest fires raging near Chile's coast, Interior Minister Carolina Toha said on Saturday, warning the toll was likely to climb higher.

Fifteen of the 19 victims "have already been identified," Toha said on Saturday morning, adding that there were 92 active fires, with 43,000 hectares (106,000 acres) burned across the country.

Officials there gave the "preliminary" toll as Chilean President Gabriel Boric decreed "a state of emergency due to catastrophe, in order to have all the necessary resources" to fight the fires. About a dozen fires have been raging since Friday. The blazes are concentrated in the Vina del Mar and Valparaiso tourist regions, where they have ravaged thousands of hectares of forest, cloaked coastal cities in a dense fog of gray smoke and forced people to flee their homes.

"We have preliminary information that several people have died, around 10," said Sofia Gonzales Cortes, state representative for the central region of Valparaiso.

Firefighters try to put out a fire in Viña del Mar, Chile, on Friday. AFP

In the towns of Estrella and Navidad, southwest of the capital, the fires have burned nearly 30 homes, and forced evacuations near the surfing resort of PiChilemu.

"I've never seen anything like it," 63-year-old Yvonne Guzman told AFP. When the flames started to close in on her home in Quilpue, she fled with her elderly mother, only to find themselves trapped in traffic for hours.

"It's very distressing, because we've evacuated the house but we can't move forward. There are all these people trying to get out and who can't move," she said. On Friday, Chilean President Gabriel Boric decreed "a state of emergency due to catastrophe, in order to have all the necessary resources" to fight the fires. "All forces are deployed in the fight against the forest fires," he said in a message posted to social media platform X.

Residents are evacuated from their homes during a fire in Chile on Friday. AFP

Emergency services were set to meet on Saturday morning to assess the situation. Around 7,000 hectares have already been burned in Valparaiso alone, according to CONAF, the Chilean national forest authority, which called the blazes "extreme."

Images filmed by trapped motorists have gone viral online, showing mountains in flames at the end of the famous "Route 68", a road used by thousands of tourists to get to the Pacific coast beaches.

On Friday, authorities closed the road, which links Valparaiso to the capital Santiago, as a huge mushroom cloud of smoke "reduced visibility."

The fires are being driven by a summer heatwave and drought affecting the southern part of South America caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, as scientists warn that a warming planet has increased the risk of natural disasters such as intense heat and fires.

As Chile and Colombia battle rising temperatures, the heatwave is also threatening to sweep over Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil in the coming days.

Agence France-Presse