The delegate for the reconstruction in the south-central zone of the country due to the forest fires, Paulina Saball, addressed the emergency caused by the situation and the challenges that the reconstruction of the houses affected by the fires will entail, which have already consumed a total of 439 thousand hectares.
in conversation with Third, Saball recalled what happened in the commune of Santa Olga during the year 2017 and the lessons learned from the event. In this sense, he emphasized the importance of cooperation between civil society, the State and the private world.
“The active participation of the communities in the design of the reconstruction, who understood that a town was being redesigned that was going to have a higher welfare standard than they had. This integrated perspective is a lesson that we can replicate here. The cooperation between the public services, civil society and municipalities, and public-private collaboration, which was a decisive factor,” he recalled.
Complementing the above, for Saball “the participation of the private sector will be decisive in all stages of the process” of rebuilding the homes affected by the forest fires.
“Today we have seen all the collaboration of the volunteers, of innumerable anonymous people, of the construction companies, the Corma, the CPC and all the organizations that are present today helping in all the communes in the emergency process. Our challenge is that this collaboration be maintained and strengthened in the coming reconstruction process,” he added.
Along the same lines, the delegate admits that “in a situation like this, and I hope it will always be like this, there is room for all sectors: public, private and civil society. In our country there are many civil society organizations that play a role very important and that many times we do not make visible”.
“In Chile, solidarity in complex moments is really great. What we have to achieve is that this transversal solidarity in this stage of emergency is also expressed in agreements in the reconstruction process,” he declared.
“Disasters, by putting the entire system in tension, generate collaborations that did not exist in the country before and show risks that were not seen before. That is why we must take advantage of them. After these fires, I hope that we will not only replace the infrastructure and homes , but that we do it for better and safer ones. To be a better country,” concluded Saball.
