The Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, gave an assessment of the situation generated as a result of the forest fires that continue to affect the center-south zone of the country. According to the information, the accidents persist in the regions of La Araucanía, Ñuble and Biobío. In the latter, would be the most worrying situations, according to Tohá.
“There are 266 active fires and yesterday there were 260. Of this total, those that interest the most are those that are controlled, which are 164, and those in combat, 73,” reported the minister, after the creation of a new Disaster Risk Management Committee (Cogrid ) in dependencies of the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (Senapred).
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Regarding the damages caused by the fire, the Government records almost two million homes destroyed, of which one thousand one hundred have a file for emergency housing, while the others have not yet completed their evaluation process. The victims are more than seven thousand, there are 324 sheltered, 3034 health care and 25 deaths.
Regarding the fight against the flames, the Secretary of State explained that it continues, despite the fact that “many of the support teams from other countries have completed their cycle.” Given this, “we have asked several to continue working. It was done with Brazil and will be tried with Mexico, Portugal and France.”
“A significant effort has been made by international efforts to obtain more retardant, it has not been possible. Attempts have been made to purchase it, which has also been difficult,” explained Minister Tohá.
The head of the Interior and Public Security portfolio added that there are 39 arrests made by the Carabineros and four by the PDI. “The vast majority are due to negligent behavior and in some cases due to obstruction and others, although there are fewer cases, due to suspicion of intentionality,” she explained.
25% intentionality
The emergency is 19 days old and, according to the balance of the Executive, so far, the technical teams have analyzed a total of 685 fires, of which 172 would have been intentionally caused, which would not be relevant in the direct fight against the accidents.
Let us remember that the Minister of Housing, Carlos Montes, downplayed the issue of intentionality in forest fires. “One can speculate a lot but the important thing is to contain the fire,” he pointed.
Along the same lines, “specialized investigations, which are what Conaf does, tell us that of the fires evaluated so far, which are 685, there are still many to evaluate, but of those that have already been evaluated and investigated, we have 25.1% intentional arson,” reported the Minister of the Interior, along with calling not to focus the debate on “controversies” on this issue.
“Deepening controversies regarding the issue of how much intentionality there is or is not, is not useful to face this emergency. We know that there is intentionality in the field of fires, we know that there are more than 99% of fires that are caused by a human factor involved. Of these human factors, some are negligence, others escalate to culpable acts, others are rightly fraud: intention to start a fire. Investigations have to establish that,” Tohá concluded.
