VALPARAISO, Chile — President Michelle Bachelet vowed Tuesday to reconstruct this once-beautiful port city according to a master plan that would prevent many of the 11,000 victims of devastating wildfires from rebuilding on hills that cannot be protected from disasters.
The fires, which started Saturday and leaped from hilltop to densely populated hilltop, have been contained but not extinguished. Stiff winds threaten to lift the embers, putting still more neighborhoods at risk. The fires already have consumed as many as 3,000 homes and killed 15 people while injuring hundreds more.
‘‘We think this is a tremendous tragedy, but . . . it is also a tremendous opportunity to do things right,’’ Bachelet said in an interview with El Diario de Cooperativa. ‘‘What we’re looking at in terms of reconstruction is how to rebuild in a more orderly manner, better and more worthy’’ of Valparaiso’s status as a World Heritage City.
UNESCO granted the city that honor in large part because of its unique architecture, laid out on narrow, curving streets that climb hills so steep many people commute by climbing stairways or riding cable cars. Brightly painted, improvised wooden houses hug forested hills and ravines, which form a natural amphitheater around Chile’s second-largest port.
The city has been plagued throughout history by wildfires that can spread quickly when the wind blows out to sea. Indigenous Changos who lived there before the Spanish conquest called the area ‘‘Alimapu,’’ which means ‘‘land overtaken by fire,’’ said Orion Aramayo, an urban planning specialist at Valparaiso’s Catholic University.
While some victims were middle-class families, thousands more lived in primitive conditions, sharing structures built on tiny ledges carved into the hills. Many homes were built illegally, lacking water and sewer connections, with improper foundations on dangerous slopes. Often, there is no way for emergency vehicles to reach them.
With so many houses reduced to rubble and nearly 4.5 square miles of the compact city’s forests turned to ash, Chileans were debating about whether bulldozers might help solve longstanding problems.
Urban planners called for safer structures, wider streets, and better infrastructure. Some cultural representatives expressed concerns that new construction could endanger the city’s rich character.
Thousands of fire victims have returned to the hills, even to charred places on denuded slopes that could turn into landslides in the next rain.
Many experts blame the Chilean state for decades of uncontrolled growth. ‘‘The government is responsible for having allowed homes to be built in dangerous areas, and somehow it has to show these people that they’re in a place where their lives are at risk,’’ said architecture professor Jonas Figueroa at the University of Santiago.