Chile wildfires rage for third day, entire towns wiped out

Wildfires that have killed 20 people in southern Chile and wiped out entire towns raged for a third day Monday, fanned by warm temperatures and strong winds at the height of the southern hemisphere summer.

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The blazes started at the weekend in the Nuble and Biobio regions - about 500km south of the capital Santiago — and have since ripped through an area the size of the US city of Detroit.

Around 1 000 homes have been destroyed or damaged, officials said.

President Gabriel Boric said this week that firefighters had managed to contain some of the blazes but that others remained “very active”and that new fires had broken out in the Araucania region bordering Biobio.

Both Nuble and Biobio were declared disaster areas, allowing for the deployment of soldiers who patrolled a desolate landscape of melted cars, twisted metal and houses reduced to rubble.

“It was horrible. I tried to wet the house as much as possible, but I saw the flames coming toward my neighbourhood.