February 15th

EDITORIAL

The Community in CERT

What do we understand by community? A group of people who live in a well limited geographic area or political-administrative unit –such as a municipality, county or city, a town or even a neighborhood? or a group of people sharing values and goals? ... Read more

What happened this week?

Emergency Plan of action for the rainfall and floods in Argentina. 

In early 2019, heavy rain caused flooding in northern Argentina, affecting more than 30,000 people in the provinces of Chaco, Corrientes, Santiago del Estero, Tucumán, Santa Fe and Entre Ríos. The ARC’s emergency and disaster response director travelled to the most affected provinces to provide support to the technical assessment teams and coordinate actions with government institutions working in the affected areas ... Read more

Extreme Weather in Chile Causing Catastrophic Fires. 

February has just begun and already weather extremes are being seen throughout the country of Chile. In the northern part of Chile one of the world's driest deserts is flooding and in the south some of the planet's wettest woodlands are burning.According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) extreme weather changes in early 2019 in the southern hemisphere, caused heat records to tumble in Chile...  Read more

Interesting Facts

Do you know some of the reasons why the South-Central area of Chile goes through massive fires?

Chile has replaced many of its native forests with plantation forests to supply pulp and timber mills that produce paper and wood products. As a result, highly flammable non-native pine and eucalypt forests now cover the region. Eucalypt trees, which are native to Australia, and pine trees native to the United States contain oils and resins in their leaves that, when dry, can easily ignite. This situation will likely facilitate future fires to spread more easily and promote more large fires into the future ... Read more


2019 Starts with extreme, high-impact weather around the world.

This year has been marked by high impact weather in many parts of the world, including dangerous and extreme cold in North America, record heat, wildfires and rainfall in Australia, record hot temperatures and rainfall in parts of South America, and heavy snowfall in the Alps and Himalayas ... Read more

Policy Developments and Outlook

CERT response to the massive fires in Chile.

The Chilean authorities, ONEMI and CONAF, together with the community, are working on a campaign to prevent wild fires in the Maule region, located in Talca province. This campaign focuses on the early prevention of fires and  community members response. The campaign teaches how to extinguish fires and to prevent them by not burning agriculture field ... Read more



Climate Change is not the only responsible for the increase of wildfires in Chile.

There is a lot of talk about fighting fires in Chile, the number of brigades, airplanes and helicopters increase to bring help to the greater vulnerability area, but ?Are we been conscious of the preparation of the ecosystems to those fires?. We currently have a hot season, but that doesn’t mean that there are no other underlying factors that influence. One of the most important is the increase of the human population in urban areas and the replacement of ecosystems with more flammable plants; this is not something made only by the effects of climate change ... Read more




Extreme fires burn in the south and center of Chile. More than 70,000 hectares  have been lost.

It was impossible to directly attribute the increasing severity of the country’s wildfires to climate change, but global warming does create condition that favour blazes. Droughts lead to stressed, dry vegetation which in turn becomes fuel for fires. We have to remember that the high temperatures, the wind or the humidity are not the ones that produce the wildfires, but people ... Read more