LatinNews Daily - 12 February 2025

*Argentina’s Public Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and Defence Minister Luis Petri have announced the creation of a federal emergency agency in response to the wildfires that have been raging through Patagonia since the end of January. Speaking from El Bolsón in the northern Patagonian province of Río Negro, one of the areas affected by the fires, Bullrich noted that there were currently “twelve structures in the national state alone that fight emergencies, disasters, fires or floods, depending on the emergency”, saying this created an overlap “that generates disorder at the time of action”. Bullrich stated that the new agency “will have verticality in the use of funds and in all the structures that today are dispersed across the ministries”. The new agency will sit under the public security ministry. Petri added that the fire had destroyed more than 130 homes and 3,700 hectares (ha) of land in El Bolsón, adding that it had been started intentionally. According to  international environmental NGO Greenpeace, the fires have destroyed more than 37,000ha of forests and houses in the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, and Chubut and are the worst to have hit Patagonia in the past three decades.