BUENOS AIRES. Around 36 thousand homes have been left without electricity supply due to a fire in a substation in the Caballito neighborhood, in Buenos Aires, an event that left no victims.
The fire took place for unknown reasons in a substation of the Edesur electrical company on José María Moreno Avenue, where firefighters have gone to try to contain the flames.
“Firefighters are working on the fire that occurred at our Caballito substation. Once the situation is controlled, we will be able to evaluate the damage,” stated Edesur through his account on the social network X.
The company has indicated that some 36,000 homes have been left without supply, which may not be resumed for several hours, according to the Argentine state news agency, Télam. Several buildings in the area have been evacuated as a precaution.
Argentina was struggling in recent days to extinguish a fire in native forests where more than six thousand hectares were consumed by a fire in the Patagonia region in southern Argentina, while firefighters are fighting another outbreak in an important nature reserve near the tourist town of Bariloche, authorities reported this Tuesday.
Argentina endured a heatwave between January 21 and 31, while the Chilean capital Santiago reported its third highest temperature ever recorded on January 31, exceeding 37C.
Once the forest emergency is controlled, Chile, for its part, faces the challenge of rebuilding the areas of Valparaíso devastated by the fires that left 131 dead.
A high number of victims lived in irregular settlements.
On February 2, in the middle of the southern summer with temperatures close to 40°C, simultaneous fires swept the hills of Valparaíso, where thousands of people lived on unauthorized land.
It took firefighters five days to control the deadliest fires in recent history in Chile. Without a relocation plan, residents are resettling in devastated areas. The hills of Viña del Mar, the epicenter of the tragedy, are overpopulated. For decades, thousands of people have stayed in wooden houses that burned within minutes and contributed to the spread of the fire.
The firefighters could not reach several points due to the lack of roads or were stuck in their machines in the narrow accesses, on whose banks rows of charred vehicles remained.
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For Miguel Castillo, from the Faculty of Forestry Sciences at the University of Chile, rebuilding these neighborhoods would be “irresponsible.” “People are being condemned to death again from now on, at a time that only nature will know,” says the academic.
But given the lack of alternatives to relocate thousands of families, it would be necessary to at least build concrete or cement houses and regularize the settlements to provide them with services.