Megaincendio de febrero de 2024 en la conurbación de la provincia de Valparaíso y zonas de interfaz urbano-forestal, Chile

• Autor: Castañeda-Meneses, Patricia Lorena
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2025
• Institución: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Repositorio: PUCP-Institucional
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:repositorio.pucp.edu.pe:20.500.14657/204993
• Enlace del recurso: https://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/Kawsaypacha/article/view/30436/27967; http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14657/204993; https://doi.org/10.18800/kawsaypacha.202502.D012
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: Climate change; Environmental disasters; Fourth generation fires; Fifth generation fires; Megafire; Wildland-urban interface zones; Valparaíso, Chile; Cambio climático; Desastres ambientales; Incendios de cuarta generación; Incendios de quinta generación; Megaincendio; Zonas urbano-forestales; https://purl.org/pe-repo/ocde/ford#2.07.01

On February 2 and 3, 2024, the conurbation of the Province of Valparaíso, Chile, was affected by a catastrophic megafire. In this context, the article presents the results of a qualitative study with an exploratory-descriptive approach, aimed at analyzing the event from the perspective of the contribution of wildland-urban interface zones to the occurrence of the disaster. The findings show that the wildland-urban interface zones of the Valparaíso conurbation constituted a powerful fuel load that increased the territory’s vulnerability to the megafire. This vulnerability was exacerbated by high temperatures, low humidity, and strong winds, resulting in a high destructive potential that reached an unprecedented level of devastation. There is a high risk that such an event will recur in the territory, given the structural geographic conditions that favor the presence of wildland-urban interface zones, compounded by a decade-long megadrought, the existence of fast-growing forest plantations on urban margins, and human impact. It is concluded that the occurrence of the megafire is linked at a macro level to the process of climate change and its consequences—megadrought and heat waves—factors that, in this case, contributed to the development of a catastrophic event.