Survivors of Chile’s recent deadly wildfires described a nightmare, a hurricane of fireballs leaping from hill to hill, lighting up everything within its path in seconds. The region faces wildfires almost every year, but the speed and lethality of last week’s blaze was unprecedented. At least 131 people were killed and hundreds are still missing, marking it as Chile’s worst natural disaster in years.
Scientists say the main driving factor for this event is simple: hotter temperatures. The wildfires spread quickly due to high winds, which are common in central Chile. Raul Cordero, a climatologist at the University of Santiago, notes that strong summer winds are typical in the area, as air coming down from the Andes mountain range and other elevated areas compresses and heats up.
However, Cordero said that what made last week’s event different was the unusually high temperatures, likely caused by climate change and the El Nino phenomenon. He emphasized that what happened last week is not normal.
Chile has also been suffering from a crippling drought for the last 15 years, which contributed to the wildfire situation. The drought created a mass of vegetation that dried out quickly and became susceptible to catching fire with high temperatures, according to Cesar Morales, a water expert at the University of Chile.
He also mentioned that a similar phenomenon is happening across the Andes in Argentina, but across a larger space with lower population density. Last week, the Nahuel Huapi National Park in Argentina’s Patagonia region caught fire and thousands of hectares were burnt. In Brazil, wildfires surged in the Amazon rainforest in October amid a drought driven by climate change.
As climate change worsens, scientists predict that extreme weather events will become more frequent and severe, making deadly events like last week’s fires more common. “Without El Nino or global warming, it’s very unlikely we would have had last week’s deadly forest fires,” Cordero stated.
Reporting by Natalia Ramos, Jake Spring and Lucinda Elliott; Writing by Alexander Villegas; Editing by Sandra Maler
