Forest fires in Chile

A volunteer firefighter and a Chilean forestry official have been formally accused by prosecutors of involvement in setting wildfires that engulfed central Chile this past February, killing over 130 people.

Implicated so far is volunteer firefighter Francisco Ignacio Mondaca, along with Francisco Pinto, an official from Chile's National Forestry Corporation (CONAF), part of the Agriculture ministry that is responsible for preventing forest fires.

Authorities say Mondaca, the firefighter, carried out the plot while citing the CONAF official as the mastermind behind it.

Prosecutors said they had access to evidence that shows Moncada and Pinto acted deliberately and that they had knowledge about the optimal weather conditions to start fires. 

Officials found that in each of the four places where fires first broke out on Feb. 2, they also found devices made of cigarettes and matches that started them.

The judge gave authorities six months to finish the investigation, saying that more work had to be done on the cases of missing victims and each suspect's cell phone, according to a post on Valparaiso's prosecutor office's X account. 

Prosecutor Osvaldo Ossandon said authorities were able to link Mondaca to six previous fires that occurred in the area, according to a post on X from Valparaiso's prosecutor's office.

There were 1,127 VIIRS fire alerts reported between the 6th of March 2023 and the 4th of March 2024 considering high confidence alerts only. 

In Chile, there have been 382 VIIRS fire alerts reported so far in 2024. 

In the last 4 weeks in Chile, the region with the most significant number of fire alerts was Región Metropolitana de Santiago, with 7 fire alerts. This represents 8.4% of all alerts detected in Chile, Global Forest Watch reports.

The death toll from raging wildfires in Chile has risen to at least 112 people, with hundreds more missing, authorities have said.

President Gabriel Boric warned that casualties would rise “significantly” as forest fires continued to blaze in the central region of Valparaiso.

Authorities said 200 people were reported missing in and around the city of Viña del Mar, a popular beach resort where some of the most intense fires have raged.

Forest fires raging in central Chile have killed at least 51 people and the death toll is likely to keep climbing, authorities said on Saturday, 3 February, as emergency services battled to snuff out flames threatening urban areas.
Black smoke billowed into the sky over many parts of the Valparaiso region, home to nearly one million inhabitants in central Chile, while firefighters using helicopters and trucks struggled to quell the fires.

Areas around the coastal tourist city of Vina del Mar have been some of the hardest hit and rescue teams were struggling to reach all the affected areas, Chilean authorities said.

By early February, the fires had developed into a large outbreak of at least 406 individual fires, several dozen of which were classified as "red alert fires". The fires burned more than 430,000 hectares (1,100,000 acres) and resulted in the loss of 24 lives, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency in multiple regions of the country.

A series of wildfires began in Chile. 
The Ñuble region has maintained a preventive early warning due to the threat of forest fires as a result of high temperatures. 

The fires coincided with an unprecedented heat wave in the south of the country, with temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius in southern areas.

René Garreaud from the University of Chile said the extremely high temperatures are driven by warm, naturally recurring Puelche winds blowing from the east, superimposed on a warmer climate. 

The interior minister, Manuel Monsalve, confirmed that 17 people had been arrested for possibly starting fires by such activities as welding or burning wool.

This year has been a year with significant rains this had contributed to the growth of grass that could produce fires in the dry season. 

Central and southern Chile had been hit by very large fires, with eleven deaths and 467,000 hectares burnt.

Chile has been suffering from a megadrought since 2010 – the worst for a thousand years. 
These drought conditions exacerbate summer fires because the vegetation becomes more flammable.

The military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet signed a decree designed to subsidize the intensive forestry industry and the monoculture of eucalyptus - a highly inflammable species - in the center and south of the country.