The Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, confirmed this Saturday the death of 19 people as a result of the forest fires that affect the Valparaíso Region and whose emergency is centered in Viña del Mar and Quilpué.
The authority confirmed that the death toll “is very provisional” because there are other areas that they have not yet been able to enter due to the danger of the fire.
Tohá specified that the 19 deceased people belong to Villa Independencia in the Achupallas sector of Viña del Mar. “This is because it is a sector that had a very strong presence of the fire and today it is possible to enter the place, but there are other areas of the fire where we still do not have confirmed reports. So they are data, in that sense, very provisional,” he indicated.
The minister also confirmed that “all those bodies have already been recovered, of which 15 have already been identified, among them a young woman under the age of 17.”
“There is a lot of work to do regarding the identification of these people and we have also reported an alleged misfortune that is a person from this same area,” he added.
The head of the Interior indicated that “we are working very actively because we have reports from other places where there are indications that there could be more people dead, but we do not have confirmation on the ground and, therefore, we cannot report specific numbers.”
“The priority is on the fires in the Valparaíso Region due to its proximity to urban areas, there fundamentally we have several fires, but two are of greater concern,” explained Tohá, who explained that one is Complejo Las Tablas with 6,800 hectares, and the one in Lo Moscoso, in Quilpué, with 1,150 hectares.
In addition, another fire was activated in the Curauma sector, close to Las Tablas, which “if it spread, would generate a lot of complexity in the management of this fire,” he explained.
A total of 14 ships and five helicopters are working in the area to fight the fires. More warehouses are not required because the area “is not very large. It is very dense, but not very extensive,” he explained.
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