News
More Than a Decade of Megadrought Brought a Summer of Megafires to Chile
As relentless drought dries out subsistence farmers’ wells, vast eucalyptus and pine plantations, remnants of the Pinochet dictatorship, are torching their communities.
Story and Photos by James Whitlow Delano
CHIGUAYANTE, Chile—As the dark curtain descended, turning the blazing afternoon sun over the braided currents of the Bío Bío River into a burnt orange twilight, a firefighting helicopter with a gigantic bucket dangling below it emerged from the gloom and followed the river back toward the city of Concepcion.