(Bloomberg) -- Wildfires raging across central Chile burned the rural town of Santa Olga last night as temperatures hit record highs and authorities struggled to cope in a country accustomed to natural disasters.
The fires destroyed as many as 1,000 homes late yesterday in Santa Olga, 260 kilometers to the south of Santiago, according to Carlos Valenzuela, the mayor of the neighboring city of Constitucion. The blazes have now cost the lives of seven firefighters, police and local citizens.
“Thousands of people have lost their homes,” Valenzuela told Radio Cooperativa. “There are areas that have been completely abandoned and handed over to the fire. Unfortunately, they are being razed to the ground.”
|$170M agricultural loss already
Since coming to power in March 2014, President Michelle Bachelet has had to deal with a series of natural disasters, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and fires. The latest disaster has already cost the agricultural sector alone $170 million, according to estimates by Colliers International. Finance Minister Rodrigo Valdes told reporters Monday that the government could deal with the current fires without extra borrowing. Since then though, the devastation has worsened.
About 260,000 hectares have been consumed by more than 100 separate fires, many of them in the wine valley of Colchagua and the rich forestry lands further south, according to the Forestry Agency, Conaf. Bachelet has called the fires the worst forestry disaster in the country’s history.
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People react to the advancement of a forest fire in Hualañe, a community in Concepcion, Chile, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017. (Alejandro Zoñez/Aton via AP)
|Record heatwave
Stoking the flames has been a heatwave across central Chile, with temperatures regularly peaking above 35 degrees Celsius. Yesterday, the temperature peaked at 37.4C in Santiago, a record for the city that came just five weeks after the previous record was set, according to the country’s meteorological unit. The city has often been clouded in smoke from the forest fires.
Lucy Ana Aviles, the Chilean wife of Wal-Mart heir Benjamin Walter, has spent $2 million to dispatch a 747 SuperTanker from the U.S. to help combat the fires. The plane started operating yesterday. A state of catastrophe continues in areas to the south of Santiago, allowing the government to call in the army for help.
Natural disasters have become all too familiar in Chile in the past few years. In early January, parts of the coastal city of Valparaiso, a world heritage site, were destroyed by fire, just two years after others sections of the same city were burnt down.
In September 2015, an earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale hit the town of Illapel, while another measuring 8.2 damaged the town of Iquique in April 2014. In March 2015, floods killed at least 28 people when torrential rain hit the northern desert, while a month later the Calbuco volcano exploded in southern Chile.
Firefights are now struggling to cope with the latest disaster.
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Firefighters dig trenches in a effort to stop the advancement of a forest fire in Hualañe, a community in Concepcion, Chile, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2017. (Alejandro Zoñez/Aton via AP)
A youth wearing a head lamp watches a forest fire rage on a mountain in Cajon del Maipo, on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2017. Chile is suffering one of its worst fire waves in history. The fires have outpaced local ability to put them out, forcing Chile to request international aid. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
This Jan. 21, 2016 shows a home and bicycles destroyed by a forest fire in Pumanque, Chile. AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
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