MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chilean plan to rebuild Valparaíso but people already returning to their rubble plots

Valparaíso despite its Unesco World Heritage status is plagued with pockets of poverty particularly in the burnt hills surrounding the port-city

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet vowed to reconstruct Valparaíso, utilizing a new plan that would prevent many of the 11,000 victims of devastating wildfires from rebuilding on hills that cannot be protected from disasters. But she faces a battle to convince evacuees to relocate, with many wishing to return to what remains of their previous homes.

 The fires that started on Saturday and leaped from densely populated hilltop to hilltop have been contained but not extinguished, with the country’s forestry agency saying it could take up to three weeks to fully quench the flames. Every stiff wind threatens to spread burning embers further, putting more neighbourhoods at risk. The fires already have consumed as many as 3,000 homes and killed 15 people, while injuring hundreds more.

“We think this is a tremendous tragedy, but... it is also a tremendous opportunity to do things right,” Bachelet said in an interview. “What we’re looking at in terms of reconstruction is how to rebuild in a more orderly manner, better and more worthy” of Valparaíso’s status as a World Heritage City.

UNESCO granted the city that honour in large part because of its unique architecture, laid out on narrow, curving streets that climb hills so steep that many people commute by climbing stairways or riding cable cars. Brightly painted, improvised wooden houses hug forested hills and ravines, which form a natural amphitheatre around Chile’s second-largest port.

The city has been plagued throughout history by wildfires that can spread quickly when the wind blows out to sea. Indigenous Changos who lived there before the Spanish conquest called the area “Alimapu,” which loosely means “land destroyed by fire,” said Orion Aramayo, an urban planning expert at Valparaíso’s Catholic University.

The disaster has set a light on the poverty in the city. While fire victims include middle-class families, thousands more lived in primitive conditions, sharing structures built on tiny ledges of land carved into the hills. Many of these homes were built illegally, lacking water and sewer connections, with improper foundations on dangerous slopes and no way for emergency vehicles to reach them in a crisis.

With so many houses reduced to rubble and nearly 4.5 square miles of the compact city’s forests turned to ash, some commentators were debating about whether bulldozers might help solve longstanding problems.

Urban planners called for safer structures, wider streets and better infrastructure. Cultural representatives however expressed concerns that new construction could endanger the city’s rich character. And thousands of fire victims returned to their home sites on the hills, squatting amid charred rubble on denuded slopes that could turn to landslides in the next rain.

Many experts blame the Chilean state for decades of uncontrolled growth.

“The government is responsible for having allowed homes to be built in dangerous areas, and somehow it has to show these people that they’re in a place where their lives are at risk,” said architecture professor Jonas Figueroa at the University of Santiago.

Valparaíso Mayor Jorge Castro bemoaned the city’s disorderly development Sunday, saying that “we are too vulnerable as a city: we have been the builders and architects of our own dangers.” By Monday, he was acknowledging that many people would rebuild in the same vulnerable spots.

Bachelet, however, stood firm yesterday. “Protecting the people comes first. And second, relocating them,” she said, suggesting that the state will expropriate land if it has to. “Honestly, I believe we have to do something more. It’s not enough to reinstall houses or support families. We have to do something more substantive.”

All of Valparaíso remained under military rule. About 5,000 fire-fighters, police, forest rangers, soldiers, sailors and civil defence workers joined the fight against the wildfires, which the forestry agency said could take 20 days to fully extinguish. More than 20 helicopters and airplanes flew overhead, dropping water on the smouldering ruins, as evacuees looked on.