Huge wildfire shutters Chile national park

SANTIAGO: Chile closed Friday one of its most popular national parks in peak hiking season after a massive wildfire ravaged tens of thousands of acres of pristine Patagonia and showed no signs of abating.

High winds fanned the blaze at the Torres del Paine National Park, a 2,400-square-kilometer (927-square-mile) paradise of mountains, glaciers, natural forests and lakes in deep southern Chile visited by more than 100,000 people each year.

After meeting emergency officials struggling to get a grip on the inferno, President Sebastian Pinera announced that the park would remain shut throughout January.

Some 11,000 hectares (27,200 acres) of woodland and scrub, nearly four percent of the total area of the park, has already been destroyed by the blaze, which more than quadrupled in size in less than 24 hours.

The Chilean government has deployed four planes and a helicopter to the remote mountainous region, where 300 firefighters, soldiers and forest rangers were engaged in a desperate effort to get the inferno under control.