Chile ‘megafire’ razes coastal communities in Biobío and Ñuble, testing government transition

The houses in Lirquén no longer have addresses.

On a recent morning, residents stepped over warped metal roofing and the shells of burned cars, trying to work out where one home had ended and another began. The smell of smoke lingered over the small port town on Chile’s south-central coast, even as soldiers rolled up checkpoints and authorities eased a nighttime curfew that had kept streets empty after dark.

“Punta de Parra no longer exists,” one resident told Chilean television, using the past tense for a seaside neighborhood between Lirquén and Tomé that local officials say was almost completely destroyed. “There is nothing left.”

A ‘megafire’ across south-central Chile

Scenes like this have played out across the Biobío and Ñuble regions since mid-January, when a wave of fast-moving wildfires turned a familiar summer threat into what the Chilean government called a “megafire.” At least 21 people were killed, more than 50,000 residents were forced to evacuate and thousands of homes were destroyed in a corridor of forest, farms and working-class coastal communities north of the regional capital of Concepción.

By late January, Interior Minister Álvaro Elizalde reported 21 deaths, 20,278 people classified as having suffered major losses and 817 homes destroyed nationwide in the episode. As damage assessments continued, regional authorities in Biobío and Ñuble later put the number of destroyed houses at more than 4,000.

The fires, which began around Jan. 16 and burned into early February, scorched at least 45,000 hectares in the core complex alone, according to satellite-based estimates. They struck a part of Chile that had been identified in government plans as a high-risk zone, despite an expanded firefighting budget and new equipment rolled out just months earlier.

Emergency powers, curfews and mass evacuation

The disaster unfolded less than two months before a change of government in Santiago, turning the emergency into an early test for outgoing President Gabriel Boric and conservative President-elect José Antonio Kast, who takes office March 11.

On Jan. 18, as flames advanced toward coastal towns and smoke drifted over Concepción, Boric declared a constitutional state of catastrophe for Biobío and Ñuble. The move allowed the armed forces to take charge of public order and logistics and imposed some of the strictest measures Chile uses short of a full state of siege.

Rear Adm. Edgardo Acevedo, appointed as chief of national defense in Biobío, quickly ordered night curfews in Lirquén, Penco, Nacimiento and Laja. Residents needed special permits, known as salvoconductos, to move after dark while firefighters and military units worked to contain the flames and prevent looting.

“The measures we have adopted seek to safeguard the security of people and facilitate the work of emergency teams,” Acevedo said as the curfew went into effect.

For many, the orders came as they were still fleeing walls of fire. Evacuation alerts sent by the National Disaster Prevention and Response Service, or Senapred, led tens of thousands to leave their homes in a matter of hours. Shelters opened in schools and community centers, housing at least 544 people at the peak of the crisis. Others slept in cars, on beaches or with relatives away from the fire line.

By Jan. 19, authorities and international agencies were describing a patchwork of blazes from Biobío to neighboring La Araucanía, with NASA satellite images showing thick columns of smoke streaming west over the Pacific. Senapred and government briefings at that stage cited roughly 30,000 hectares burned and about 50,000 evacuees.

Where the damage was worst

The most severe losses were concentrated in coastal and peri-urban zones where pine and eucalyptus plantations meet steep hillsides crowded with lightweight homes. In Biobío alone, officials later counted nearly 3,800 houses destroyed.

In Ñuble, inland communes such as Ránquil and Quillón saw vineyards, wheat fields and forest plantations go up in flames. Fires known as Perales Biobío and Monte Negro burned thousands of hectares before being brought under control in the second half of January.

Heat, drought—and the human factor

Authorities and experts agree that the fires’ rapid spread was driven by a combination of prolonged drought, extreme heat and strong winds. Much of central and south-central Chile has been in a so-called megadrought for more than a decade, leaving soils and vegetation unusually dry.

During the week of Jan. 16, temperatures in parts of Biobío approached 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit), with gusty winds off the coast. Under those conditions, even a small ignition could quickly turn into an uncontrollable blaze.

The government has repeatedly stressed that in Chile, most ignitions start with human activity.

“Prevention is a duty and a shared responsibility, because 99% of fires are caused by human beings,” Boric said last October as he launched the 2025–2026 Action Plan for the Prevention, Mitigation and Control of Forest Fires. Standing in front of a mobile command post known as PUMA, he warned that anyone acting as an arsonist or irresponsibly with fire should know that “the full force of the state will be brought to bear; there will be no impunity.”

Those words echoed through the Biobío and Ñuble regions in January as prosecutors and police opened investigations into how some of the most destructive fires began.

In La Araucanía, police arrested a man in the town of Perquenco on Jan. 22, accusing him of starting a fire in a wheat field using a liquid accelerant. Security Minister Luis Cordero said officers seized several liters of fuel at the scene.

Separately, in the Biobío Region, a 39-year-old man was placed in pretrial detention after investigators alleged that embers from a faulty wood-burning stove at his home had started a blaze known as Trinitarias. Prosecutors have argued in court that the fire merged with other fronts to form part of the complex that burned more than 45,000 hectares, destroyed more than 2,300 homes and injured hundreds.

The man’s defense has contested the accusations, and no one has been convicted in connection with the 2026 fires. The National Prosecutor’s Office has said that while human causes are likely, it is still examining a range of possible triggers, from negligence and accidents to deliberate arson.

Some regional officials have suggested a broader pattern. Biobío Regional Governor Sergio Giacaman told a Chilean radio station that “it is evident there is intentionality” behind the fires, pointing to multiple ignition points aligned with prevailing winds. He did not present public evidence to support the claim, and national authorities have urged caution while inquiries continue.

The debate over intentionality comes less than two years after prosecutors accused members of a private forestry brigade and volunteer firefighters of deliberately starting blazes in the 2024 Valparaíso-area wildfires, which killed 138 people. That case, still in the courts, has fueled mistrust among residents and raised the stakes for any mention of arson in this year’s fires.

A structural problem: plantations and vulnerable housing

While investigators focus on individual conduct, climate scientists and urban planners say the broader backdrop is structural: an extended dry spell, flammable commercial plantations and the expansion of settlements into fire-prone hills and ravines.

Biobío and Ñuble sit in Chile’s Mediterranean-climate belt, often compared to California or southern Europe, where hot, dry summers and strong winds are typical. Over recent decades, large areas have been planted with fast-growing pine and eucalyptus for the pulp and timber industries. Those species are economically important but can act as continuous fuel, especially when planted close to homes without adequate firebreaks.

At the same time, population growth and rising housing costs have pushed lower-income families to settle on steep slopes at the forest’s edge, often in makeshift or lightly built houses with limited infrastructure. When fire sweeps through, these neighborhoods can be both the first to burn and the hardest to rebuild.

The Boric administration has argued that it strengthened the country’s capacity to respond to such disasters. The 2025–2026 action plan more than doubled the budget for combating forest fires, increased the number of seasonal firefighting brigades and added aircraft to the national fleet.

Yet Cordero acknowledged during January’s briefings that the Biobío–Ñuble episode was comparable in intensity to the mega-fires of 2017, 2023 and 2024. In terms of burned area, some officials and analysts have said the 2026 fires surpassed Valparaíso’s 2024 catastrophe, even if the death toll was lower.

Reconstruction amid a change of government

The timing has added a political layer to the technical and humanitarian challenges. In visits to the disaster zone, Boric said reconstruction would take years and would continue under the next administration. He met with Kast and the president-elect’s incoming ministers of housing, public works and social development to discuss early plans.

“This reconstruction will go beyond my administration,” Boric said during a visit to Biobío. “It has to be a state policy.”

Kast, who campaigned on promises of tougher public security policies and a more conservative economic agenda, has emphasized that managing the current emergency remains the responsibility of the outgoing government, while long-term rebuilding will fall to his.

As curfews ease and schools prepare to reopen in Biobío and Ñuble, that long-term work is only beginning. Authorities face pressure to move quickly so families can leave shelters and informal camps. They also face calls from mayors, experts and residents to avoid simply recreating the same vulnerable patterns of housing and land use.

For now, in places like Lirquén and Punta de Parra, the immediate tasks are more basic: finding temporary shelter, recovering documents from the rubble, reconnecting water and electricity, and tracing invisible property lines through a landscape of ash.

Where streets once twisted between brightly painted houses, charred foundations now mark the contours of entire blocks. Residents point to where their living rooms, workshops and kiosks used to stand, and where eucalyptus trees once shaded their roofs. As summer wears on, the blackened hills above them offer a stark reminder that in Chile’s changing climate, the line between forest and town is growing more fragile with each hot, dry season.