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Chile leader vows to reconstruct port city devastated by wildfires

The Columbian
Published: April 15, 2014, 5:00pm

VALPARAISO, Chile — President Michelle Bachelet vowed Tuesday to reconstruct this once-beautiful port city according to a master plan that would prevent many of the 11,000 victims of devastating wildfires from rebuilding on hills that cannot be protected from disasters.

The fires that started Saturday and leaped from hilltop to densely populated hilltop have been contained but not extinguished. Every stiff wind threatens to lift burning embers, putting more neighborhoods 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. “What we’re looking at in terms of reconstruction is how to rebuild in a more orderly manner, better and more worthy” of Valparaiso’s status as a World Heritage City.

UNESCO granted the city that honor 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 amphitheater around Chile’s second-largest port.

While the city is often blanketed by fog from the Pacific Ocean, it has been plagued throughout history by wildfires that can spread quickly when the wind blows out to sea.

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, Chileans were debating Tuesday about whether bulldozers might help solve long-standing problems.

Urban planners called for safer structures, wider streets and better infrastructure. Some cultural representatives 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.

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