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Villagers are seen with their belongings in the street, after they left their houses because of a forest fire in the town of Vichuquen in the Maule region, Chile, on Jan. 25, 2017. Reuters

More than 4,000 people were fighting — and dealing with the aftermath of — a series of wildfires in Chile this week that destroyed more than 300,000 acres of land. Nearly 40 blazes were still burning Tuesday, just hours after President Michelle Bachelet requested more money to relieve the disaster zone and declared a state of emergency in the devastated South American country.

"We face the greatest forest disaster in our history, with an affected area 20 times greater than in 2016, but we will overcome the emergency," Bachelet tweeted earlier this week. She later said, "The firefighters are doing all that is humanly possible."

The fires broke out more than a week ago and caught on quickly, given the recent high temperatures and low humidity in Chile, the Washington Post reported. The blazes damaged more than 100 vineyards in Chile's Maule area alone, prompting ranchers to free their animals in hopes of protecting them and join together with their neighbors to fling buckets of water on the fires that surrounded them.

At least three people have died and more than 140 have been injured so far.

"This is worse than an earthquake," Juan Carlos Donoso, a resident of Litueche, told Agence France-Presse. "We are very scared because we are farmers — we have animals, fields and houses that have been burned."

The severity of the fire has caused victims and authorities to seek outside help from countries like Brazil, Mexico and Canada. The United States sent Chile experts and Money, while nations like France were expected to share helicopters capable of extinguishing the fires. Bachelet also had the interior ministry create a catastrophe zone for the hundreds of Chileans affected.

However, even that reaction has caused backlash.

"What burnt here was a cultural patrimony of more than 200 years. The authorities always minimize [these problems] and don’t react on time," Diego Morales, a vineyard owner, told Decanter.com. "I hope we can value our history and culture before this type of event happens again."

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