decree curfew in fire zones in Chile

First modification: 02/10/2023 – 12:18

Chile announced a night curfew in the areas hardest hit by forest fires in the south-central part of the country to guarantee safety and prevent robberies, according to President Gabriel Boric. The movement restriction, which will come into effect at midnight on Friday and will be in effect until 05:00 a.m., concerns 28 municipalities in three regions: Biobío, Ñuble and La Araucanía.

“Many intentional foci”

Since the beginning of the week, opposition parties, mayors and organizations such as the Chilean Wood Corporation (Corma), which brings together forestry companies, have requested communal curfews.

“We are asking for a curfew because we have had many intentional sources of fire, also people who set lights in other places where the general course of the fires does not go and that causes us other complications. In addition, we have suffered robberies, people feel unsafe, it is also so that emergency vehicles can pass. So with that curfew we are going to avoid having so many volunteers, so many people taking photos, filming, when there are sources of fire. And that makes emergency vehicles, ambulances, firefighters, etc., able to pass faster,” Ana Albornoz, the mayor of Santa Juana, told RFI.

“rural areas devastated”

The high temperatures, the strong winds and the low humidity have given no respite to the center-south of Chile. Currently, of the 323 active forest fires, 90 are being fought. The authorities raised the alerts for this Thursday and Friday due to the risk that the fires spread to other regions due to the high temperatures forecast.

“Right now we have all the rural areas devastated in the commune of Santa Juana, in the Biobío region, we have more than half of the region burning. In Chile we have more than 246,000 hectares completely consumed by fire and particularly our commune, which has been the most affected. We have new sources of fire”, explains Ana Albornoz.

More than 5,600 firefighters and forest brigade members, with the help of contingents from Mexico, Colombia, Spain and Argentina, among other countries, continue trying to extinguish the wave of fires. The DC-10 Ten Tanker, the US firefighting aircraft capable of discharging 36,000 liters of water, presented problems again on Thursday, after it resumed operations after a previous mechanical failure.

“Humanitarian aid”

“We must act to contain the emergency and the outbreaks that are opening up due to the rugged geography, we have to go, deliver humanitarian aid and at the same time control the outbreaks. We have to try to bring water to the people, bury the dead animals, so that the people have a place to relieve themselves and help them with the first medical care, because we have many major burns and burns, and day by day we find new bones that we do not know if They are of animals or people. Therefore, the situation is absolutely critical”, affirms the mayoress of Santa Juana.

The flames, which have left at least 24 dead and some 2,196 injured, have devastated more than 343,000 hectares in the Ñuble, Biobío, La Araucanía and Maule regions, an area equivalent to a third of the territory of Puerto Rico. The wave of fires has also completely destroyed 1,205 homes and left 5,570 people homeless, according to the official balance.

The current crisis is increasingly similar to that at the beginning of 2017, when a chain of fires devastated some 460,000 hectares and left 11 dead, nearly 6,000 injured and more than 1,500 homes destroyed. The outbreaks had also started then in agricultural areas and forests, and advanced to populated areas.

About twenty people were arrested for their responsibility at the start of the fires.