The death toll from central Chile’s blazing wildfires jumped to at least 99 people on Sunday, after President Gabriel Boric warned the number would rise “significantly” as teams search gutted neighborhoods.
Responders continued to battle fires in the coastal tourist region of Valparaiso amid an intense summer heat wave, with temperatures soaring to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) over the weekend.
Rosana Avendano, a 63-year-old kitchen assistant, was away from home when the fire began to sweep through Vina del Mar, the seaside city where she lives with her husband.
“It was terrible because I couldn’t get (to my house). The fire came here… we lost everything,” Avendano told AFP.
“My husband was lying down and began to feel the heat of the fire coming and he ran away.”
She feared the worst for hours, but eventually was able to contact him.
“Not a single house was left here,” retiree Lilian Rojas, 67, told AFP of her neighborhood near the Vina del Mar botanical garden, which was also destroyed in the flames.
The organization in charge of managing victims’ bodies said Sunday afternoon it had “taken in 99 people, 32 of them identified.”
Speaking earlier in Quilpue, a devastated hillside community near Vina del Mar, Boric had given a toll of 64 people, but said the number was certainly “going to rise.”
“We know it is going to increase significantly,” he added, saying it was the country’s deadliest disaster since a 2010 earthquake and tsunami that killed 500 people.
Dead victims in the streets
Boric has declared a state of emergency, pledging government support to help people get back on their feet after he flew over the affected area in a helicopter Saturday afternoon.
According to the national disaster service, SENAPRED, nearly 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) had been burned across the central and southern regions by Sunday.
Supported by 31 firefighting helicopters and airplanes, some 1,400 firefighters, 1,300 military personnel and volunteers are combating the flames.