On Monday, Chile began two days of national mourning for their dead following a raging wildfire in the country that consumed the residential areas in the coastal cities of Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar.
At least 122 victims' lives have been claimed by the wildfires thus far, and only 32 of those victims have been identified. Most of the deaths that have occurred were in Vina del Mar, a popular tourist area known for its beaches and botanical gardens. The search for hundreds who are missing continues, and some 14,000 homes are said to have been damaged by the fires, officials say.
"All of Chile weeps for Valparaiso," President Gabriel Boric said Sunday, adding that the death toll could rise “significantly”. The 37-year-old president declared a state of emergency, and pledged government support for those affected by the fires.
The towns of Quilpe and Villa Alemana—which are also in the Valparaiso region—have also been hit hard by the wildfires.
“It’s like a war zone, as if a bomb went off,” said a 63-year-old eyewitness who fled her home in nearby Villa Independencia—the epicenter of the disaster—on Friday, and returned to nothing but wreckage on Monday.
“It burned like someone was throwing gasoline on the houses. I don’t understand what happened … There was a lot of wind, a lot of wind and big balls of fire that would fly by.”
The fires in Chile reportedly began to rage on Friday and were quickly accelerated by winds and an intense heatwave that the country has been battling this summer. Santiago, the country’s capital, has been experiencing consecutive days of hot and dry temperatures above 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius).
Those temperatures have been driven by the El Nino weather pattern, as well as human-caused climate change.
A man was at home doing welding work when a fire accidentally started and spread to nearby grasslands, police say. The suspect was reportedly arraigned on Sunday in connection to the wildfires, though it has not been confirmed if that was the cause of the fires or if the fires were started intentionally.
The national disaster service SENAPRED has said that nearly 64,000 acres have been burned as of Sunday.
A reported 31 firefighting helicopters and airplanes, and roughly 1,400 firefighters, and 1,300 military personnel and volunteers worked to combat the wildfires. Schools and other public buildings in Vina del Mar and Santiago have been turned into recovery centers where victims of the fire can receive water, food and other resources.