(Reuters) – A volunteer firefighter and a Chilean forestry official have been formally charged by prosecutors with participating in wildfires that tore through central Chile in February, killing more than 130 people.
Among those involved so far are volunteer firefighter Francisco Ignacio Mundaka, and Francisco Pinto, an official with Chile’s National Forestry Company (CONAF), which is part of the Ministry of Agriculture and is responsible for preventing forest fires. .
The prosecutor’s office in the coastal city of Valparaiso, near the worst-hit area of the fire, said on Saturday that both suspects had been detained before trial.
Lawyers for the men could not immediately be reached.
Authorities said firefighter Mundaka carried out the plot and said CONAF officials were the masterminds.
Prosecutors said they have evidence that Moncada and Pinto acted intentionally and that they knew the best weather conditions for the fire.
“The material we have shows that they agreed to act jointly to ensure that the fire started when the appropriate meteorological conditions emerged,” Valparaiso District Attorney Claudia Perivancic told reporters.
Officials found fire-starting devices made from cigarettes and matches at four locations where the fire first broke out on February 2.
The judge gave authorities six months to complete the investigation and said more must be done on the missing victims’ and each suspect’s cellphones, according to a post on the Valparaiso Prosecutor’s Office X account.
Prosecutor Osvaldo Ossandon said authorities were able to link Mundaka to six previous fires in the area, according to a post on X by the Valparaiso prosecutor’s office.
The fires are the worst natural disaster to hit the South American country since the 2010 earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 500 people.
Chile, Argentina and other parts of South America’s Southern Cone face severe heat waves that experts say will become more common in the southern summer due to climate change.
The El Niño climate phenomenon, which causes Pacific warming, also intensifies extreme weather in Chile.
