Chilean President Gabriel Boric warns of a "tragedy of very great magnitude" after Wildfires raging through central Chile left at least 99 people and hundreds missing.
Wildfires that started several days ago threaten the outskirts of Vina del Mar and Valparaiso, two coastal communities popular with tourists. More than a million people live in those cities located west of Santiago.
Drone footage captured by Reuters in the Vina del Mar area showed entire neighborhoods incinerated, with residents sifting among the ruins of burned-out buildings with collapsed corrugated iron roofs. On the streets, singed cars littered the roadways.
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Chilean authorities have imposed a 9 p.m. curfew in the hardest-hit areas and deployed the military to assist firemen in containing the spread of fires. Helicopters sprayed water to douse the flames from the air.
Chile's Legal Medical Service, the state coroner, said that 99 individuals died in the flames, with 32 remains identified.
Earlier in the day, when he announced two days of national mourning beginning Monday, Boric warned Chile to brace itself for more bad news.
"It is Chile as a whole that suffers and mourns our dead," Boric said in a televised speech to the nation. "We are facing a tragedy of very great magnitude."
Authorities said that hundreds of people have gone missing. More than a thousand homes have been damaged. On Saturday, officials reported that more than 90 fires were blazing across Chile.
Although flames are not unusual in the Southern Hemisphere's summer, the severity of these blazes stands out, making them the country's greatest national tragedy since the 2010 earthquake, which killed approximately 500 people.
Last year, a record heat wave killed 27 individuals and impacted more than 400,000 hectares (990,000 acres) of land.
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