Hear
Santiago, Chile.- A firefighter and a forestry official were arrested in Chile, accused of being the authors of the fire that left 137 dead and thousands of houses destroyed in February in the tourist city of Viña del Mar.
The firefighter was arrested as “the author of the fires that occurred in the month of February in the Valparaíso region,” where Viña del Mar is located, said the director of the Investigative Police (PDI), Eduardo Cerna. The detainee was identified as Francisco Ignacio Mondaca Mella, 22 years old. He had joined the force – which is voluntary in Chile – a year and a half ago.
The Valparaíso Prosecutor’s Office later announced the arrest of a second person involved, an official from the National Forestry Corporation (Conaf). Both will be charged with the crime of “fire resulting in death” as a consequence of the several fires that broke out simultaneously on February 2, in the surroundings of Viña del Mar, 110 km from Santiago.
The accidents left 137 dead and 16,000 injured, according to official figures. Research based on phone traffic, tracking and videos They allowed us to reconstruct in detail the route followed by the firefighter and his communications with the other suspect.
“The field work, the gathering of evidence, the analysis, the crossing of information was what made it possible to locate, establish behavioral patterns and geographical publications of movements” of the detained firefighter, Cerna explained.
According to Iván Navarro, commissioner of the Environmental Crimes Investigation Brigade, it was possible to reconstruct the behaviors and activities of the firefighter in the moments before, during and after. “We were able to establish what were the exact places in which the fire outbreaks developed and find the device that started these bulbs”, he detailed.
It was also possible to determine the participation of the official, accused of being the intellectual author. This person “provided the knowledge for him to generate these devices and also indicated the exact moments in which he had to operate so that the incident would have a greater degree of damage,” Navarro added.
The Viña del Mar fire was the second deadliest in the world this century. From the beginning, local authorities pointed out that it was an intentional act. “All Viñamarina people we knew this had been an intentional attack and today we can have that degree of certainty,” said Mayor Macarena Ripamonti.
According to the investigations, The fire originated with small simultaneous fires that occurred near Lake Peñuelas, in the port of Valparaíso, neighboring the city of Viña del Mar.
The heat and intense gusts of wind that day in the middle of summer quickly spread the flames. Firefighters were unable to put out the fire. due to the lack of roads or because they got stuck in the narrow approaches to the city, where rows of vehicles were charred.
“There were approximately four focuses, equidistant from each other,” said the prosecutor specializing in fires, Osvaldo Ossandón.
From the office where Mondaca worked, everything was consternation. “We are completely devastated by what happened, it is a completely isolated event (…) we have been more than 170 years serving Valparaíso and we cannot allow this type of situation,” Vicente Maggiolo, fire commander of the 13th company of that region, to which the detainee belonged, said at a press conference.
Elements with which the fire started were found in the house of the detained firefighter. It is also being investigated whether he participated in other previous accidents.
“This is, first of all, an act of justice and reparation for those who lost their lives in the fire, with their families, with whom they lost all their property, their sources of work and struggle to this day,” said the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá.
Agencies AFP, ANSA and El Mercurio/GDA
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