Deadly wildfire razes entire town in Chile: 'Literally like Dante's Inferno'

A whole town has been devoured by flames in Chile as unusually hot, dry weather undermined effort to battle the most exceedingly terrible forest fires in the nation's
recent history.

More than 1,000 structures, including schools, nurseries, shops and a mail station were demolished in Santa Olga, the greatest of several communities to be reduced to ashes in the Maule region.

One body was later found from the remains. Two people have been declared missing, but residents were evacuated unharmed. Few will have a home to return to.

Drone images showed entire neighbourhoods reduced to ashes. The roads are still neatly symmetrical, but the buildings in block after block lie in smouldering ruins under a hazy sky.

Even for a region that is frequently hit by earthquakes and floods, the extent of the destruction was shocking.

“Nobody can imagine what happened in Santa Olga. What we have experienced here is literally like Dante’s Inferno,” said the Carlos Valenzuela, the mayor of the encompassing municipality Constitución. “We were recovering after the last earthquake, but this tragedy has messed up everything.”

He said the smaller communities of Putú and Cabezalillo had also been damaged.

“The situation is awful. It’s the worst catastrophe we’ve had in a number of years. I believe that this surpasses any tragedy that we have had before, this is much worse than when it was the earthquake or the floods. It is a thing that does not stop, is advancing,” said Francisco Henríquez, director of Orca Chile, a civil organisation deployed in the area.