‘Extreme’On Friday, Chilean President Gabriel Boric decreed “a state of emergency due to catastrophe, in order to have all the necessary resources” to fight the fires.”All forces are deployed in the fight against the forest fires,” he said in a message posted to social media platform X.Emergency services were set to meet Saturday morning to assess the situation.Around 7,000 hectares have already been burned in Valparaiso alone, according to CONAF, the Chilean national forest authority, which called the blazes “extreme.”Images filmed by trapped motorists have gone viral online, showing mountains in flames at the end of the famous “Route 68”, a road used by thousands of tourists to get to the Pacific coast beaches.On Friday, authorities closed the road, which links Valparaiso to the capital Santiago, as a huge mushroom cloud of smoke “reduced visibility”.The fires are being driven by a summer heatwave and drought affecting the southern part of South America caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, as scientists warn that a warming planet has increased the risk of natural disasters such as intense heat and fires.As Chile and Colombia battle rising temperatures, the heatwave is also threatening to sweep over Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil in the coming days.
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