Climate change, forest plantations and poor drainage: the cocktail of tragic fires in Chile America of the future
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Chile is experiencing bitter days. Although the main source of the fire in urban areas, which was in the Valparaíso region of Chile’s south-central region, has been extinguished, the devastation left by this megafire remains enormous. Data – still preliminary – indicate that 130 people lost their lives, another 100 are missing, 15,000 homes were affected and the fire burned about 55,000 hectares of land. What happened? Despite not being the most widespread fire ever recorded in the country, it has claimed the highest number of human lives since it was first recorded in 2017 with 570,000 hectares of land burnt.
Víctor Orellana, former National Deputy Director of the National Emergency Office between 2014 and 2018 and advisor to the National Research Center for Integrated Management of Natural Disasters (SIGIDEN), remembers that 11 people died in the 2017 fire. Record broken with 26 deaths in 2023. But this year there was a huge increase: 130 people.
Understanding why chili burns so much is a question that involves many variables. However, Professors Dolores Armenteras of the National University of Colombia and Francisco de la Barrera of the University of Concepcion in Chile pointed out in a commentary published last year in the journal Nature, “Climate change and unsustainable land use practices are causing megafires in South America.” And Chile has been no exception. Adding to last week’s drama was the fact that the incident occurred in a populated area.
Context: Climate Change
Although scientific study will be required to accurately answer what role climate change played in this latest fire in Chile, global warming conditions cause fires to generally spread faster. “For example, in Chile the winds are stronger, temperatures are higher, there are heat waves and the duration of drought is increasing. While on days with less rainfall the vegetation becomes drier – and more suitable to act as fuel -, the wind moves the fire more easily through the area,” de la Barrera tells America Futura. telling.
In fact, a graph created by the United Nations Environment Programme, using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as input, shows calculations that better demonstrate this relationship. In a scenario where the average global temperature does not rise by more than 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial levels (the target sought by the Paris Agreement), 41% more land area would be exposed to wildfire globally. global . If warming is limited to 2 °C, the percentage increases to 62%, and would increase to 97% under a 3 °C temperature rise scenario.
Moreover, as Ignacio Araya, a Master in Climate Change Science, Development and Politics from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, says, Chile has suffered a major drought since 2008 that has become more powerful. “Although last year’s rainfall was considered normal, it also contributed to the growth of more light vegetation such as grasses, which also becomes fuel when the short rainy season enters and dries up.”
But as de la Barrera tells America Futura, the magnitude of climate change is not a completely controllable variable. And in that equation of limiting fires, there was one factor that could have played a decisive role in the Chile fires: poor scenario planning.
Fuel: Non-native species and forest plantations
“Climate, atmosphere and meteorological conditions make fires more likely to spread, the next thing is to see what can burn,” explains the expert from the University of Conception. And south-central Chile would appear to meet many of the conditions for a fire to erupt. “There is a large percentage of forest plantations that are not native species, such as some varieties of eucalyptus and pine, which have high flammability.”
In the south central region of Chile, according to the article NatureExotic forest plantations reached 520,000 hectares by 2017 and 450,000 hectares by 2023. And many arrived there, Ayala recalls, as part of a policy of encouragement of state subsidies to large forestry companies during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The problem is that, over time, many were abandoned and others expanded into native forests, becoming practically pure fuel. This, and poor scenario planning, may explain, in part, why the current fires are raging so intensely, not only in Chile, but across much of South America.
“Although the amount of resources allocated to control fires in Chile is increasing, almost doubling between 2017 and 2014, it is not being effective. Because Because what is needed is an emphasis on area planning,” says de la Barrera. He gave some examples of how this could work, starting with regulating forest plantations, limiting their expansion and preventing one plantation from being taken over by another. “Between these plantations, which should not be very large, agriculture and livestock can be included, which are less prone to fire.”
Furthermore, he comments, a regulation would be needed that would establish how close a city could be to these plantations. “We have to cover more kilometres. We have cases in which the populated area is less than 800 meters from these forests, while the distance, at least, should be about three kilometers.
And although a bill is currently in progress to regulate the prevention of forest and rural fires in Chile – including classifying territory according to the level of fire incidence, defining forest buffer zones, managing the use of fire and developing fire regulations. Preventive nature – de la Barrera believes that in addition to legislation, more and better decisions are needed at the landscape scale, regarding forestry models.
lack of evacuation was fatal
Orellana, former national deputy director of the National Emergency Office, emphasizes that most fires are caused by human action, whether “negligent, accidental or intentional.” Then there is climate change, which spreads them further, and an absurd scenario, which acts as fuel. There must be a focus for each of these processes and when all this fails, alert systems are necessary for evacuation.
“Since 2013, Chile has been working with the Emergency Alert System, a strategy that sends evacuation messages to people’s cell phones in the event of various events such as fire or tsunami,” he says. In the case of this year’s fire, something could have gone wrong, because, on other occasions, such as the fire in the city of Santa Olga in 2017, although everything burned down, all the residents also managed to get out.
There is still no clear answer as to what happened. Orellana has some hypotheses. The first thing, he assures, is that in case of fire, knowing where to evacuate is not as logical as in other disasters: the fire does not move in one direction and the escape route may not be obvious. “The second thing is that 200 antennas were damaged by the fire and since it is a message that came from Santiago, we do not know whether it actually reached everyone.” Thirdly, the alert system leaves the decision in the hands of each individual and, sometimes, it is not easy to free it. “There are elderly or sick people who can’t be left behind or are afraid of losing their homes if they can’t live there.”
As EL PAÍS previously reported, the alerts arrived, according to President Gabriel Boric. “For various reasons the fire was moving very quickly, more than 10 kilometers per hour. “It’s faster than people can walk.” However, to clear up any doubts, the President initiated an external investigation from the European Union.
“Of course, the impact of the fire can be measured in many ways, but the loss of lives is the most shocking. “This is the tragedy we are experiencing,” he concluded. “The lesson to be learned is that this alert system, which has been in place for a few years, probably needs an update, or will have to work in conjunction with other technologies such as radio and television.” All three – climate change, scenarios and alerts – are something Chile undoubtedly needs to start looking at.