Fires: extreme classism and inefficiency

Approximate reading time: 1 minute, 38 seconds

The disastrous fires that affected Viña del Mar, Quilpué and Villa Alemana demonstrated that – for some time – our governments have acted with extreme classism and inefficiency. It is important to keep in mind that Chile (and the world!) has been experiencing disastrous fires for many years; and that they have affected urban or rural residents of popular sectors. Particularly in the case of towns or cities, these have been families that live in high-risk sectors because they have occupied – due to their extreme poverty – the vacant places they could.

For the same reason, adequate policies for the prevention and control of large fires is something that involves high investments (in airplanes and effective technologies) that, ultimately, are particularly in favor of popular sectors. Leniency in these matters reflects, therefore, an extreme classism of which one is surely not even aware.

Thus, we have seen on TV the testimonies of various experts and especially Michel de L’Herbe who has related how for eight years the successive governments (of Bachelet, Piñera and Boric) have turned a deaf ear to the urgent requirements for high-capacity aircraft. greater scope to discharge water and technologies that also allow effective night-time fire fighting.

To this we must add the unusual fact recently known that the government authorities at 3 p.m. On the fateful Friday, February 2, they considered that the fire in Peñuelas did not involve a risk for Valparaíso and Viña. And only at 6:41 p.m. An alert was issued for El Olivar (Viña), twenty minutes before the fire reached the city! (see “The Second”; 2-12-2024). And something already known: That Boric at 8:24 p.m. summoned the Cogrid (Disaster Risk Management Committee) – made up of the Senapred (National Disaster Prevention and Response Service) and the respective Presidential Delegation – to meet to monitor the disaster the following day (Saturday the 3rd) 8 hrs.! And that only at 11:34 p.m. decided to advance the meeting to 0:30 hrs. of Saturday…

And another expression of extreme classism is the stubborn maintenance by the Municipality of Viña del Mar of the Viña Festival scheduled between February 25 and March 1. That is, for less than two more weeks!; considering that, to date, there are more than 130 people officially deceased plus several missing (the government indicates that there are 16 and the mayor of Viña estimates them in the hundreds!); and it is estimated that several thousand homes are affected; and gigantic material, psychological, emotional and security damage. As these are poor people, the festival is maintained, because obviously if the tragedy had been a great tsunami that would have affected the area of ​​Viña – where the upper and middle classes live – with similar effects; There would be no doubt that the Festival would have been suspended. And rightly so.

Felipe Portales