At Least 99 Dead In Chile Wildfires

Viña del Mar, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Feb, 2024) 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.

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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.