“He was a kilometre away from the fire when his friends woke him up,” Hezi Singer told Israeli military radio. His son Rotem, who was twenty three years old, had just been detained in the far south of Chile. He was accused of starting a fire by accident in one of the most photographed landscapes in the world. His father said the Chilean authorities were simply looking for someone to blame.
The accusation was very small compared with the damage. According to the Associated Press, Singer’s travelling companions said that he had burned toilet paper after going to the bathroom and had not put the flames out completely. The Chilean authorities said the fire in Torres del Paine National Park had started in exactly that way. The regional prosecutor, Juan Meléndez, said the man had accepted that he had carelessly allowed the fire to start.
The result was one of the worst fires in the park’s history. By the end of December 2011, when Singer was detained, about 110 square kilometres of forest had burned and 400 tourists had been evacuated, because firefighters could not stop the fire. More than 560 firefighters were working there, and the government declared a state of emergency in the region. Officials said that nearly four percent of the whole park had burned.
Torres del Paine is in southern Chilean Patagonia, where granite peaks rise above the dry grassland, with glaciers on one side and bright lakes below. The park was created in 1959 and became a World Biosphere Reserve in 1978. It is famous for its wind, and the windiest months, from November to January, are also the busiest months for tourists. The head of Chile’s emergency service, Vicente Núñez, said his crews were facing “an extreme scenario, mainly due to topography, strong winds and highly combustible vegetation”.
That summer the whole south of the country was burning. Firefighters were fighting three large fires, and one of them killed an elderly man who refused to leave his home. More than 100 houses were destroyed, and tourists had to stay away from the park, which cost the local economy millions of dollars. A heat wave and a drought made everything worse. “We have a situation of extreme vulnerability,” said President Sebastián Piñera. He said it could take weeks to control the park fire.
Singer’s family said the story made no sense. His grandfather, Gilad Harel, told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that the accusations were strange, and that Rotem was “a responsible person, who served in a combat unit in the army”. Singer said he was innocent, although the newspaper Haaretz reported that he admitted lighting a fire in a part of the park where fires are not allowed. The same newspaper reported that, as he was taken into the courtroom, people shouted “filthy Jew” at him.
He was arrested on 31 December and released on bail. The police kept his passport, and he had to stay in Patagonia during the investigation.
The case ended in February, and it ended with trees. A court in Puerto Natales ordered Singer to pay a fine of 10,000 dollars to the government of Chile and to do two years of community service for the Jewish National Fund. The fund agreed to help raise money to plant 50,000 new trees in Torres del Paine. Under the agreement, Singer was not blamed for the fire. He came from Nes Tziona in central Israel, and Ynet reported that he was continuing his backpacking trip.
Fires in the park did not stop. In 1985 a tourist started a fire that burned about 150 square kilometres. In 2005 an accidental fire started by a Czech backpacker burned for around ten days, and the Czech government later gave one million dollars for replanting.
Today the rules are enforced more quickly. In October 2026, the forestry corporation Conaf reported that two Spanish tourists had been expelled from Torres del Paine. Park rangers caught them smoking on a trail where it is not allowed, warned them, and the couple went on smoking anyway. The rangers called the police, who detained them and took them to the prosecutor’s office in Puerto Natales, the same town where Singer’s case had ended.