The following year, forest fires in the Valpara\u00edso region killed over 130, making it the deadliest fire in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
This weekend, the Chilean government evacuated more than 50,000 people from Biob\u00edo and \u00d1uble, where the largest fires burned. On Sunday, President Gabriel Boric declared a state of catastrophe in the two regions, allowing the country\u2019s armed forces to be deployed as firefighters and aid workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CONAF, the state-owned nonprofit organization that manages Chile\u2019s forests and national parks, and SENAPRED, the state\u2019s disaster response agency, reported deploying 400 firefighters and 36 aircraft to the region on Sunday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Argentinians have begun returning to their scorched communities two weeks after the fires first broke out in the Chubut province.<\/p>\n
As residents attempt to rebuild, those most affected by the fire are the families that relied on income tied to their land, said Sofia Nemenmann, an environmental activist involved in wildfire prevention in Patagonia. \u201cThere are families that beekeep, families that produce with their gardens, and those are the families that lost the most. Because they lost not only their homes but also their source of income.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nemenmann and her partner have spent the last few weeks travelling to communities affected by the fires to help residents rebuild. But ongoing heat and strong winds threaten to set contained fires loose once more, she said. In Puerto Patriada, where a wildfire continues to burn in the nearby mountains, the air is still thick with smoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are concerned every day that it is hot or every day that it is windy,\u201d said Nemenmann. \u201cThose are days when we already know there will be more fires due to weather conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u200bThe federal response to weekslong fires in Argentina is markedly different from the situation rapidly unfolding in Chile. When the Patagonia fires began on January 5th, nearly a week passed before President Javier Milei addressed the emergency, posting an AI-generated image of him shaking hands with a firefighter.<\/p>\n
But since taking office in 2023, Milei slashed Argentina\u2019s fire management budget by more than 70 percent. The 2026 budget includes further cuts to the National Fire Management Service, nearly halving the funds for what employees of the Argentine national park office say is an agency that\u2019s already understaffed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During his campaign, Milei repeatedly argued that environmental protections are government overreaches that hinder business growth. He has also expressed great skepticism about climate change, going so far as to call it a \u201csocialist hoax.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Climate denial in Argentina is \u201cvery dangerous,\u201d said Nemenmann. \u201cIt generates concrete, tangible impacts. It generates public policy, a policy that denies the root of the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, the country treats forest fires as isolated crimes with a \u201cculprit\u201d and \u201cvictims,\u201d Nemenmann said. It\u2019s generated a reactive system that \u201conly works to put out fires\u201d rather than investing in prevention and mitigation, she says.<\/p>\n
National Security Minister Alejandra Monteoliva was quick to blame the Argentine wildfires on \u201cterrorist groups called Mapuches,\u201d referring to Indigenous communities in Patagonia that have fought with the government over land rights and the presence of extractive industries in the area.<\/p>\n
In a radio interview, Carlos Diaz Mayer, the chief prosecutor of the Chabut province, flatly dismissed Monteoliva\u2019s accusation. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing involving them in this case. I would straightforwardly reject that accusation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Argentina and Chile will face many more forest fires before the South American summer is over. The forest fire season has not yet peaked in the southern tip of the continent, typically doing so during the first half of February.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In her work with communities impacted by wildfires, Nemenmann has observed that the first point of contact or help following a disaster is most often a neighbor. \u201cIn some way, this also gives us the strength and the certainty that people are willing to learn to live with fires,\u201d she said. \u201cWe know we have to learn to live with fires.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tAbout This Story<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Anika-Jane-Beamer-Headshot-300x300.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tReporter, Iowa<\/p>\n Anika Jane Beamer covers the environment and climate change in Iowa, with a particular focus on water, soil and CAFOs. A lifelong Midwesterner, she writes about changing ecosystems from one of the most transformed landscapes on the continent. She holds a master\u2019s degree in science writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as a bachelor\u2019s degree in biology and Spanish from Grinnell College. She is a former Outrider<\/a> Fellow at Inside Climate News and was named a Taylor-Blakeslee Graduate Fellow by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than thirty wildfires ripped through Chile this weekend, killing 19 and burning more than 135 square miles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[15665,13293,4253,15229,192,5967,79,18598,6322],"class_list":["post-420315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-argentina","tag-chile","tag-climate-change","tag-drought","tag-environment","tag-heat","tag-science","tag-south-america","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAnika Jane Beamer\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n