At least 13 people were reported dead as of Friday night as a result of the more than 150 wildfires burning across Chile that have destroyed homes and thousands of hectares of forest while the South American country is in the midst of a scorching heat wave.
Four of the deaths involved two separate vehicles in the Biobio region, about 560km south of the capital, Santiago.
“In one case they were burned because they were hit by the fire,” Minister of the Interior and Public Security Carolina Toha said.
Photo: Reuters
In the other case, she said, the victims died in a crash, “probably trying to escape the fire.”
The fifth victim was a firefighter who was run over by a fire truck while fighting a blaze in the area.
Later in the afternoon, a helicopter that was helping combat the flames crashed in the Araucania region, killing the pilot, a Bolivian national, and a mechanic, who was Chilean.
At nightfall, the national agency responsible for emergencies raised the death toll to 13 without giving details on the latest deaths.
As of midday on Friday, 151 wildfires were burning throughout Chile, including 65 declared under control. The fires had blazed through more than 14,000 hectares.
Most of the wildfires are in Biobio and neighboring Nuble, where the government has declared states of catastrophe that allow greater coordination with the military and the suspension of certain constitutional rights.
The heat wave hitting Chile is set to continue with high temperatures and strong winds that could make the wildfires more challenging.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric on Friday suspended his vacation to travel to the affected areas and said there is “evidence” that some of the wildfires were sparked by unauthorized burnings.
“The full force of the state will be deployed to, first of all, fight the fires and to accompany all the victims,” Boric said.
It remained unclear how many houses and other structures had been destroyed.
“Families are having a very difficult time,” Ivonne Rivas, the mayor of Tome in Biobio, told local radio. “It’s hell what they are living through, the fire got away from us.”
The wildfires caused the suspension of a highly anticipated announcement by forensic experts who were expected to give the cause of death of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, winner of a Nobel Prize for literature.
The experts were set to give their view on whether Neruda died of complications from prostate cancer or whether he was poisoned, potentially settling one of the great mysteries of post-coup Chile.
The doctor in charge of delivering the report’s findings was unable to connect to the Internet, because he is in a region affected by the wildfires, a spokesman for the country’s judiciary said.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
IMPASSE: US President Donald Trump pressed to end the filibuster in a sign that he is unlikely to compromise despite Democrat offers for a delayed healthcare vote The US government shutdown stretched into its 40th day yesterday even as senators stayed in Washington for a grueling weekend session hoping to find an end to the funding fight that has disrupted flights nationwide, threatened food assistance for millions of Americans and left federal workers without pay. The US Senate has so far shown few signs of progress over a weekend that could be crucial for the shutdown fight. Republican leaders are hoping to hold votes on a new package of bills that would reopen the government into January while also approving full-year funding for several parts of government, but
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS