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'What Climate Breakdown Looks Like': 50,000+ Flee Wildfires as Chile Declares 'State of Catastrophe'
"The first priority, as you know, in these emergencies is always to fight and extinguish the fire. But we cannot forget, at any time, that there are human tragedies here," said the country's president.
Jan 19, 2026
On the heels of another historically hot year for Earth, disasters tied to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency have yet again turned deadly, with wildfires in Chile's Ñuble and Biobío regions killing at least 18 people—a figure that Chilean President Gabriel Boric said he expects to rise.
The South American leader on Sunday declared a "state of catastrophe" in the two regions, where ongoing wildfires have also forced more than 50,000 people to evacuate. The Associated Press reported that during a Sunday press conference in Concepción, Boric estimated that "certainly more than a thousand" homes had already been impacted in just Biobío.
"The first priority, as you know, in these emergencies is always to fight and extinguish the fire. But we cannot forget, at any time, that there are human tragedies here, families who are suffering," the president said. "These are difficult times."
According to the BBC, "The bulk of the evacuations were carried out in the cities of Penco and Lirquen, just north of Concepción, which have a combined population of 60,000."
Some Penco residents told the AP that they were surprised by the fire overnight.
"Many people didn't evacuate. They stayed in their houses because they thought the fire would stop at the edge of the forest," 55-year-old John Guzmán told the outlet. "It was completely out of control. No one expected it."
Chile's National Forest Corporation (CONAF) said that as of late Monday morning, crews were fighting 26 fires across the regions.
As Reuters detailed:
Authorities say adverse conditions like strong winds and high temperatures helped wildfires spread and complicated firefighters' abilities to control the fires. Much of Chile was under extreme heat alerts, with temperatures expected to reach up to 38ºC (100ºF) from Santiago to Biobío on Sunday and Monday.
Both Chile and Argentina have experienced extreme temperatures and heatwaves since the beginning of the year, with devastating wildfires breaking out in Argentina's Patagonia earlier this month.
Scientists have warned and research continues to show that, as one Australian expert who led a relevant 2024 study put it to the Guardian, "the fingerprints of climate change are all over" the world's rise in extreme wildfires.
"We've long seen model projections of how fire weather is increasing with climate change," Calum Cunningham of Australia's University of Tasmania said when that study was released. "But now we're at the point where the wildfires themselves, the manifestation of climate change, are occurring in front of our eyes. This is the effect of what we're doing to the atmosphere, so action is urgent."
Sharing the Guardian's report on the current fires in Chile, British climate scientist Bill McGuire declared: "This is what climate breakdown looks like. But this is just the beginning..."
The most recent United Nations Climate Change Conference, where world leaders aim to coordinate a global response to the planetary crisis, was held in another South American nation that has faced devastating wildfires—and those intentionally set by various industries—in recent years: Brazil. COP30 concluded in November with a deal that doesn't even include the words "fossil fuels."
"This is an empty deal," Nikki Reisch of the Center for International Environmental Law said at the time. "COP30 provides a stark reminder that the answers to the climate crisis do not lie inside the climate talks—they lie with the people and movements leading the way toward a just, equitable, fossil-free future. The science is settled and the law is clear: We must keep fossil fuels in the ground and make polluters pay."
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'Like a War Zone': At Least 122 Killed in Deadliest Fires in Chile's History
"We are becoming one of the most vulnerable territories in the world to fires," Chilean president Gabriel Boric said in 2023.
Feb 05, 2024
Extreme wildfires made more likely by the ongoing climate crisis killed at least 122 people in Chile, destroyed at least 6,000 homes, and damaged around 14,000 as the country entered a two-day morning period on Monday after a weekend of destruction and chaos.
The fires, which ignited in the coastal region of Valparaíso late last week, were "without a doubt" the deadliest in the country's history, Interior Minister Carolina Toha said, as Le Monde reported. President Gabriel Boric said Sunday that the fires were also Chile's deadliest disaster overall since an earthquake and tsunami in 2010 and that the death toll would "increase in a significant way."
"We're facing an unprecedented catastrophe," mayor of hard-hit city Viña del Mar Macarena Ripamonti said, "a situation of this magnitude has never happened in the Valparaíso region."
"There was smoke, the sky turned black, everything was dark. The wind felt like a hurricane. It was like being in hell."
The fires first ignited in hard-to-access wooded hillsides around Viña del Mar, a popular tourist destination on the coast, according to The Associated Press. But they then descended upon developed areas, fueled by drought and heatwave. With temperatures in the area reaching 40°C, the fires devoured a famous botanical garden in the city on Sunday and rendered at least 1,600 people homeless, according to AP. The nearby towns of Quilpe and Villa Alemana were also impacted.
"From one moment to the next, the fire reached the botanical park. In ten minutes the fire was already on us," Jesica Barrios, whose Viña del Mar home was one of those destroyed, told Reuters. "There was smoke, the sky turned black, everything was dark. The wind felt like a hurricane. It was like being in hell."
Another resident of nearby Villa Independencia evacuated her home on Friday to find it destroyed on Monday.
"It's like a war zone, as if a bomb went off," 63-year-old Jacqueline Atenas said. "It burned like someone was throwing gasoline on the houses. I don't understand what happened... There was a lot of wind, a lot of wind and big balls of fire that would fly by."
Drone footage shared by The Guardian showed blocks of homes torched and reduced to rubble and ashes.
"We need help, pet food, supplies, clothing," one woman told
The Guardian. "I don't know. My house, I lost everything, everything."
Boric declared an emergency in Chile's central and southern regions due to the fires. "All of Chile is suffering," Boric said, "but we will stand up once again."
Deputy Interior Minister Manuel Monsalve said that 165 fires were still blazing as of Sunday night, though cooler and cloudier weather predicted for the next few days should help firefighters to control them, according to Reuters. The AP reported that fires burned less intensely on Monday.
Toha said that 43,000 hectares had burned as of Saturday, according to AFP. On Sunday, Toha said around 1,400 firefighters had been sent to fight the flames, as BBC News reported. The military is also assisting emergency services.
There are reports that some of the fires may have been intentionally started.
"These fires began in four points that lit up simultaneously," Valparaíso Governor Rodrigo Mundaca said Sunday, as AP reported. "As authorities we will have to work rigorously to find who is responsible."
El Niño conditions have also brought a drought and heatwave to southern South America during its summer, creating ideal conditions for fire. At the same time, scientists point out that this occurs in the broader context of an ongoing climate crisis driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
"No country can address the Climate Crisis alone. We need a global phase out of fossil fuels."
The fires ignited weeks after a study published in Nature on January 23 concluded that "the concurrence of El Niño and climate-fueled droughts and heatwaves boost the local fire risk and have decisively contributed to the intense fire activity recently seen in Central Chile."
Fires burned three times as many acres last decade compared to the one before, and six of the seven most destructive fire seasons in Chile's history have happened since 2014.
"In the last few years, our country has lived through the impacts of climate change," Boric said last year, which also saw intense fires, as Mongabay reported. "We are becoming one of the most vulnerable territories in the world to fires."
This is not an experience unique to Chile, as Canada's record-breaking wildfire season during summer 2023 attests. Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe explained on social media that "climate change is the difference between dropping a match into green, wet wood vs. bone-dry kindling that's been baking in unseasonably warm temps for weeks. That's how climate change is making wildfires bigger and more dangerous, regardless of their cause."
In a thread on social media, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences graduate student Aaron Thierry explained the climactic context for Chile's fires, including an ongoing drought and record-breaking heatwave and increased fires across South America.
While Chile's government is aware of and taking action on the problem, "no country can address the Climate Crisis alone," Thierry said. "We need a global phase out of fossil fuels. That means all countries need politicians who will deliver this transformative shift in governance. That means we need to get out and vote for them!"
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Chile Rejects Effort to Extend Pinochet's 'Extremist Neoliberal Model'
The proposed right-wing constitution would have further imperiled abortion rights and boosted the private sector's role in key areas, including healthcare and education.
Dec 18, 2023
Chilean voters on Sunday rejected a proposed right-wing constitution that would have further weakened abortion rights and allowed the private sector to extend its reach in the country's healthcare, education, and pension systems.
Sunday's vote marks the second time in as many years that Chileans have spurned a replacement for the current constitution, which was drafted during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's murderous U.S.-backed dictatorship and subsequently amended dozens of times.
Last year, after a massive far-right disinformation campaign, voters rejected a progressive constitution that would have enshrined gender equality, formally recognized the nation's Indigenous groups, strengthened workers' rights, and expanded the welfare state, including by making public colleges tuition-free.
The new proposal, crafted by elected members of a constitutional council dominated by conservatives, "placed private property rights and strict rules around immigration and abortion at its center," Reuters reported.
The proposed replacement would have slightly tweaked the current constitution to protect "the life of who is unborn," a change that observers said would have opened the door to the total criminalization of abortion. The procedure is currently legal in Chile only in cases of rape, a nonviable fetus, or a threat to the life of the mother.
Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler warned that the proposed rewrite "threatened to enshrine an extremist neoliberal model in the country's constitution, extending Pinochet's original vision to include provisions against abortion and same-sex marriage."
Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who also served as United Nations high commissioner for human rights, told The Associated Press that she voted against the new proposal because she prefers "something bad to something worse."
The proposal failed with 56% opposed, and Chilean President Gabriel Boric said his government would not attempt to replace the constitution a third time, ending an effort that began with an overwhelming 2020 vote in favor of rewriting the document.
"Our country will continue with the current constitution, because after two plebiscites on proposed constitutions, neither managed to represent or unite Chile in its beautiful diversity," Boric said Sunday.
Paula Ávila-Guillen, an international human rights lawyer and executive director of the Women's Equality Center (WEC), said in a statement that "Chile rejected a constitution that jeopardized the three exceptions to abortion access and would have put the lives of Chileans at risk."
WEC noted that in addition to imperiling Chileans' minimal access to abortion, the proposed replacement "included text that would have allowed pharmacies to refuse to sell the morning-after pill" and "allowed schools to reject children with single mothers under the 'institutional conscientious objection.'"
"The will of the people is clear: The majority of Chileans support reproductive healthcare and will not stand by as their rights are taken away," said Ávila-Guillen. "From Chile to Ohio, this proves that when abortion is on the ballot, protecting abortion access always wins."
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