“We have lost everything”: the pain and anger of displaced people over the fires in Chile

Located opposite the Town Hall, the Escuela Recadero de Santa Juana, a small village in central Chile, is witnessing frenetic activity despite it being the summer vacation period.

Since it opened its doors on Friday, it has not stopped welcoming families affected by the severe fires that are burning the area and bags with the help of all kinds of a community united by solidarity and tragedy.

The extreme climatic conditions, with a historic drought and very high temperatures, together with human recklessness and lack of means, have made it the “ground zero” for the fires that afflict central Chile, worst in decades.

According to the authorities, at least 24 people were killed in the flames, a dozen in this agricultural municipality near the coastal city of Concepción.

A drama that congests the faces of its inhabitants still shocked by the density of the smoke, the dangerous embers and a gray-orange sky that makes it difficult to breathe and as Marcela, one of the neighbors says, you never forget.

“We lost everything. I don’t know what to do. We managed to get out on time. My husband wanted to stay. We worked so hard and now we have nothing left,” explains the woman angrily, who arrived at the rescue center in what she was wearing.

“Today we receive all kinds of help, food, non-perishable food, water, toiletries and clothes,” Oscar Cruces Escobar, administrator of the Municipality of Santa Juana, told EFE, thanking him for the solidarity but asking for more empathy. .

A request shared by his partner, María Eugenia Suazo, who observes: “We had to discard more than half of them because they didn’t arrive in good condition.”

“We tell the community that if you want to help, do it with your hand on your heart and wear clean clothes that are not torn because there are people who are going through a difficult period, their houses are burned and this is very painful, and that they wear clothes that don’t match, it’s a pain for them,” he said.

This is the second major fire suffered by the municipalities of Santa Juana and Navidad, which have already seen more than 5,000 hectares burned at the end of December and 29 families left homeless.

recurring tragedy

For María Hidalgo, a peasant girl in her fifties, this time the flames have consumed her modest wooden house.

“It’s painful, but more painful things have happened because people burned to death in their homes. But it still hurts because all the efforts of a lifetime,” she told EFE between sobs.

“One, because a farmer doesn’t have the means, he somehow buys her things and then the fire comes and she gets hurt. It hurts like everything we see, everything that happened, other people. Thanks to my family, can you help my other little things, I would have liked everything, but it hasn’t arrived”, he adds, with deep anguish.

“But no resources came, nothing from anywhere. It doesn’t matter, because the poor are like that. That’s the label they give to the poor… we have, and in the blink of an eye, it’s all over,” he complains.

gray skies and fear

In Purén, about 144 kilometers away, already in the Araucanía region, the landscape is similar: the same masses of fire, the same ashes, the same heat and the same fear among the population, evacuated preventively before the unappealable advance of the flames, that one there They have already consumed a hundred houses.

All of the displaced remained in shelters overnight on Sunday, as the Purén fire is one of 251 that remain active in Ñuble, Biobío, Los Lagos and La Araucanía, regions of lush forest exploited by multinational forestry companies and large estates which is the granary of the country.

“It’s complex, because many families don’t want to go out and others try to go back and try to save their belongings when they see the fire coming to their homes. That’s why we ask people to help us,” said a volunteer firefighter. EFE prefers not to be identified.

The fire brigade of the environmental authority (Conaf), the voluntary fire brigade -it is not a professional body in Chile- and the neighbors are working to put out the flames, with very little air support, due, according to the authorities, to the wind and some smoke.

“There are many fires in hard-to-access areas that require an airstrike. But it’s a much more expensive job, flight time is much more expensive than operating costs overland,” said Miguel Castillo, an expert. fires by the Department of Forest Management and Environment of the University of Chile.

Source: EFE

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