Chile firefighter, forest official linked to wildfires that killed 130

Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget SCA

26/05/2024 24:25

May 25 (Reuters) - 
    A volunteer firefighter and a Chilean forestry official have
been formally accused by prosecutors with involvement in setting
wildfires that engulfed central Chile this past February,
killing over 130 people. 
  
    Implicated so far is volunteer firefighter Francisco Ignacio
Mondaca, along with Francisco Pinto, an official from Chile's
National Forestry Corporation (CONAF), part of the Agriculture
ministry that is responsible for preventing forest fires. 
    The prosecutor's office in Valparaiso, a coastal city close
to areas hardest hit by the fires, said on Saturday that both
suspects were in pre-trial detention. 
    Attorneys for the two men could not immediately be reached.
    Authorities say Mondaca, the firefighter, carried out the
plot, while citing the CONAF official as the mastermind behind
it. 
    Prosecutors said they had access to evidence the shows
Moncada and Pinto acted deliberately and that they had knowledge
about the optimal weather conditions to start fires.
     "We have material that shows that they agreed to act
jointly when the appropriate meteorological conditions arose to
ensure that the fires occurred," Claudia Perivancich, regional
prosecutor of Valparaiso, told reporters.
    Officials found that in each of the four places where fires
first broke out on Feb. 2 they also found devices made of
cigarettes and matches that started them. 
    The judge gave authorities six months to finish the
investigation, saying that more work had to be done on the cases
of missing victims and each suspect's cell phone, according to a
post on Valparaiso's prosecutor office's X account. 
    Prosecutor Osvaldo Ossandon said authorities were able to
link Mondaca to six previous fires that occurred in the area,
according to a post on X from Valparaiso's prosecutor's office. 
    The fires were the worst natural disaster to strike the
South American nation since the 2010 earthquake and tsunami that
left more than 500 dead.
    Chile, Argentina and other parts of South America's southern
cone have faced a severe heat wave, something experts say will
become more common during the southern summer months due to
climate change.
     The extreme weather in Chile has also been exacerbated by
the El Niño climate phenomenon, which warms the Pacific Ocean.

 (Reporting by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by David Gregorio)
 ((Sarah.Kinosian@thomsonreuters.com;))