Central Chile Wildfires Destroy 1,750 Homes, Kill 21 in Concepción Province

Cities like Penco and Lirquén have expanded in recent decades, sprawling outward with their fringes now just feet away from the wooded areas the fires tore through.

Data from the German Aerospace Center, cross-referenced with images from ICEYE and Vantor, show that buildings making up the peripheries of the cities damaged by the 2025 fires mostly sprang up in the 2000s and 2010s. The home of Karen Quijada, a survivor from the Las Aranejas area of Concepción, was built two decades ago at the edge of the city and was bordered by thick forest.

Karen Quijada and her family, mostly truck drivers working in the forest industry, barely escaped when the fire came.

“We have been living here for 23 years, and everything is burnt. Nothing was spared,” Karen Quijada said. Over the last 50 years, industrial tree plantations have sprung up in the region, growing mainly non-native pines and eucalyptus, which are especially flammable.

In 1979, around 166,000 acres of land in Chile were covered with pine and eucalyptus. more than 7.4 million acres today, according to Alvaro Hofflinger. Roughly 40% of the land in coastal Biobío, the region where Concepción, Penco and Lirquén are located, is now covered by either pine or eucalyptus trees, researchers found.

On April 22, 2025, Alejandro Casagrande, who heads CORMA, the forest industry association in Concepción representing more than 160 companies, wrote a letter to local and state authorities sounding the alarm over increased levels of flammable brush, organic waste and other byproduct produced by the wood industry.

Casagrande urged authorities to loosen restrictions on controlled fires in the letter. Chilean law restricts controlled fires to winter.

The local representative of the national government escalated Casagrande’s request by writing to the Interior Ministry to request an exception to carry out preventive burns, according to BioBioChile. In 2023, the Chilean fire and forestry management agency CONAF found that up to 60% of fires in BioBío were intentional. CONAF is still investigating the causes of the 2025 fire.

At least one individual was arrested on suspicion of arson and is on house arrest pending trial. In the United States, more than 554,000 arson offenses were recorded between 2015 and 2024. In 2024, Brazil introduced specific laws to address wildfire risks, including provisions to loosen restrictions for controlled fires, direct institutions to coordinate fire management plans, and increase firefighting funding.

Thanks in part to the 2024 law, the area destroyed by fire fell by 65% in Brazil in 2025, according to Brazil's environment ministry. Chile has drafted similar legislation to enforce stricter building codes and allow controlled fires to help manage fire risks, now being discussed in congress.

In the US, 45 million homes are located in Wildland-Urban Interface areas, according to data company Cotality.

Activist groups in Penco and Concepción have called for an investigation into Aclara, a Canadian mining company applying for a license to operate a rare earth mine in the area affected by the fires. A spokesperson for Aclara told CNN that the company had no involvement in the fires.