Chile accuses volunteer firefighter and ex-forestry official with causing huge fire that killed 137

Santiago, Chile — A Chilean judge on Saturday ordered the arrest of a volunteer firefighter and a former forestry official for allegedly planning and starting a massive forest fire in the Valparaíso region that caused 137 deaths and left 16,000 people homeless in February.

The Valparaíso court ruled that the two men, who were arrested on Friday, could be detained for 180 days while they are investigated.

The chief prosecutor in the case, Osvaldo Ossandón, told reporters that the main suspect is Francisco Mondaca, a 22-year-old volunteer firefighter from Valparaíso who is accused of physically starting the fire. He said flares and fireworks were found in Mondaca’s vehicle.

The other suspect was identified as Franco Pinto, a former employee of the National Forestry Corporation. He is accused of planning the crime.

Valparaíso regional prosecutor Claudia Perivancich said investigators have evidence that the two men agreed “in advance to carry out conduct of this type when weather conditions were appropriate.”

Prosecutors said there was an economic motive behind the plot: to provide more work fighting fires. They said they had not ruled out the possibility that more people were involved.

The commander of the Valparaíso Fire Department, Vicente Maggiolo, said: “We are very dismayed by the situation.”

Maggiolo called it an isolated incident and said it should not tarnish the work of firefighters. “We have been saving lives for more than 170 years,” he told TVN.

Christian Little, chief executive of the forestry department, described the arrest of a former official as “a headache” for the agency.

Both the fire department and the forestry agency said they would tighten hiring procedures.

The megafire began on February 2 in the Lago Peñuelas nature reserve, in the central region of Chile, and for several days burned several communes, even destroying more than 10,000 homes. It is considered the worst tragedy in Chile since an 8.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 500 people on February 27, 2010.