State of emergency declared in central and southern regions of the country
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foto ATON
At least 51 people have been killed in forest fires in Chile, said officials on Saturday. In a nationally televised address, President Gabriel Boric warned that the death toll could worsen as four large fires burn in the region of Valparaiso, where firefighters have struggled to reach the most threatened neighbourhoods.
President Gabriel Boric has declared a state of emergency to combat the forest fires encroaching on coastal cities in the Valparaíso region in central Chile, around 70 miles northwest of the capital, Santiago. Boric has asked for more military personnel to immediately deploy to the affected areas, home to more than 1 million people.
“The capabilities of the Legal Medical Service have been reinforced in these hours, but that will have to be increased tomorrow, because there will probably be more demand for work. The PDI is going to support this with the installation of 11 investigative teams, which They are the ones in charge of removing the bodies and the first investigative procedures that are carried out in these places,” he said.
On the other hand, he pointed out that “we still do not have a complete survey of victims, nor of the damaged homes or infrastructure,” although “roughly, we know that there are 16 affected villas, 30% of them are Serviu condominiums, 70 The remaining % are subdivisions – many of them irregular – and camps. In terms of housing, we do not have numbers but we know that there are thousands.”
Interior Minister Carolina Tohá said that the country was facing its deadliest tragedy since a 2010 earthquake that killed more than 500 people. He said, across the country, some 92 fires were burning since yesterday, and responders had managed to control 40 of them. The blazes have spread to at least 43,000 hectares, or more than 106,000 acres, Tohá had said earlier in the day.