The worst forest fires in Chile’s recent history have destroyed the entire town of Santa Olga in the Maule region. Unusually hot, dry weather stoked the fires which destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, including schools, nurseries, shops and a post office. Santa Olga is the biggest of several communities reduced to ashes in the region.
“We have never seen anything on this scale,” said Chile’s president Michelle Bachelet. “Never in the history of Chile.”
While most of the 4,000 residents in the region were evacuated unharmed, few have a home to return to. “Even for a region that is frequently hit by earthquakes and floods, the extent of the destruction is shocking.”
“Nobody can imagine what happened in Santa Olga. What we have experienced here is literally like Dante’s Inferno,” said Carlos Valenzuela, the mayor. “We were recovering after the last earthquake, but this tragedy has messed up everything.”
“The situation is awful. It’s the worst catastrophe we’ve had in a number of years. I believe that this surpasses any tragedy that we have had before, this is much worse than when it was the earthquake or the floods. It is a thing that does not stop, is advancing,” said Francisco Henríquez, director of Orca Chile, a civil organisation deployed in the area.
Even with 5,000 firefighters, the more than 90 wildfires could not be held back. The fires spread rapidly across 238,000 hectares of dry vegetation, forests. And temperatures have been quite high, such as a record 37c last week.
The overall death toll is now seven, including four firefighters, a member of the police and civilians. The economic impact is not yet clear, but it will test Chile’s ability to cope.
Dozens of helicopters, light aircraft and a Boeing 747 “supertanker” have dumped water and flame retardants from the skies, but at least 30 fires continue to rage, and more outbreaks are likely.
“The Lord is coming speedily, yet, notwithstanding his professed people read the signs of the times, — of famines, of thousands being swept away by earthquakes and floods, by fire, by calamities by sea and land, by plague, by war and bloodshed,— the love of self so deadens the spiritual sense that the day of the Lord will come upon them as a thief in the night, and he declares, “They shall not escape.” Special Testimony to the Oakland and Battle Creek Churches, 1897, page 157.