They declared a disaster area in Chile due to heavy rains

“The disaster area is not equivalent to a state of emergency, in the sense of not appointing a head of national defense, and it does not create a situation different from the deployment of the armed forces, because it was able to deploy in the first times.”

president Gabriel Burek He added that he cut short a trip he was making in the far south of the country to return to Santiago in the face of the emergency.

“A disaster area has been declared from (area) Valparaiso to the Biobbio region The purpose is to further strengthen the administrative facilities in the implementation of resources and aid, in addition to what was already available as a result of the alert and emergency funds.”

Valparaiso is located in the center of the south of the country, near Santiago, and Biobbio is 500 km south of the capital.

Tohá said that There are 2,759 isolated Various methods are being worked on to contact and support them, from helicopter flights to evacuate them or by water, but weather conditions have made these evacuations difficult.

In addition to Nationally, there are a total of 419 victims, 1,002 homeless and three missing persons.

“Since 1993, there has been no rain of this magnitude (…) with regard to what the waterways bring such as floods, cutting bridges and road damage since 1993, we did not have the situation we are living in now,” he said.

As of Saturday, there are scheduled water outages in more than half of the municipalities of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, which has a population of 7 million, and other towns and cities affected by a rain front that drenched the waters of the rivers that Santiago feeds and drinks. water systems.

According to the authorities, at least 50,000 people are without power, concentrated in the metropolitan area of ​​Santiago and in the Maule region in the center and south.