CMPC donates more than 100 thousand personal hygiene items for families affected by forest fires
The company is providing the Biobío and La Araucanía residents affected by the fires with a range of products such as hand sanitizer, soap, toilet paper and other basic necessities.
More than 1,000 homes have been destroyed by forest fires in the south central area of Chile, leaving 3,000 people without a home as a result of this crisis.
That is why in a bid to help those affected by the fires, CMPC has donated more than 100,000 personal hygiene products from its Softys subsidiary brands for Biobío and La Araucanía Region residents including hand sanitizer, bar soap, toilet paper, adult and child diapers, feminine napkins, and other products.
Specifically, these products are being delivered to the districts of Los Angeles, Nacimiento, Angol and Mulchén in Biobío and in Purén, Lumaco, Carahue, Cholchol, Nueva Imperial, Teodoro Schmidt and Freire in the Araucanía Region.
To coordinate the delivery of these products, company CEO Francisco Ruiz-Tagle, went to the Biobío Region on Monday where he also toured the surroundings and supervised the prevention work being done in the field and the forest fire fighting carried out by the company’s specialized crews. “We are very happy because we’ve received the first truck with Softys products that arrived to support the communities most affected by the fires in recent days. This will be sent to the districts of Nacimiento and Los Angeles in particular. We are starting to dispatch this aid in the next few minutes so that it reaches as many families as possible,” Ruiz-Tagle said.
The company executive also described the work that CMPC has done to prevent and combat forest fires. “Over the last week, more than 1,200 firefighters have worked to control and extinguish fires in 44 districts in south-central Chile. We have all our aerial and ground resources, among others, deployed in critical areas. In addition, last Sunday we went to the Palacio de La Moneda [seat of the national government] to coordinate efforts between the public and private worlds to handle this situation,” he explained.
In the last week alone, CMPC firefighters fought 126 forest fires in the Maule, Ñuble, Biobío, La Araucanía and Los Ríos Regions. Of the total, more than 60% of this was on land adjacent to the company property, which has only repeated the existing call for preventing these fires, especially with the challenging weather situation looming this week with maximum temperatures that may exceed 34° celsius once again in areas affected by the flames.
