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.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
RSS