Fire Breaks Out at Hotel Alto Nevados in Chile’s Nevados de Chillán, All Guests Evacuated Safely

A fire broke out Sunday afternoon, September 6, at the Hotel Alto Nevados, located in the Nevados de Chillán ski area in Chile’s Ñuble region, prompting a large-scale emergency response and the evacuation of all guests and staff. No injuries have been reported and all guests were evacuated according to the hotel’s press release.

According to Chilean outlets including La Tercera and La Tribuna, the fire was reported during the afternoon and appears to have started on the hotel’s top floor. The blaze triggered the property’s emergency evacuation protocols, and firefighter volunteers from three separate communes — Pinto, Coihueco, and Chillán — were mobilized to the scene, located along Camino Nevados de Chillán at kilometer 85, directly beside the ski area’s slopes.

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In a statement, Hotel Alto Nevados confirmed that all guests and staff were successfully evacuated and are safe: “During this afternoon, an incident is being recorded at our facilities. Given this situation, we want to inform you that the safety and well-being of all people have been our absolute priority,” the hotel said. “We confirm that all our guests have been successfully evacuated and are safe. At this time, our staff remains in close coordination and working together with the Las Trancas Fire Department, who are on site performing the necessary work to control and extinguish the fire.”

The hotel added that its team remains in permanent coordination with the Las Trancas Fire Department, whose volunteers are on site working to control and extinguish the fire, as well as with Chile’s National Disaster Prevention and Response Service (SENAPRED), adopting preventive measures in accordance with instructions from the relevant authorities. “We sincerely appreciate the signs of concern and support received. We will continue informing the public in a timely manner of any confirmed news through our official channels as we receive confirmed information on the evolution of the situation,” the statement continued. “We ask our community to remain calm, to stay informed only through official sources, and to avoid the dissemination of unconfirmed information or rumors. We especially appreciate the work and commitment of the emergency teams who are working on site.” The statement was signed by Nevados de Chillán, the resort operator, which also owns and operates the hotel.

The resort’s operator, Nevados de Chillán, also urged the public to remain calm and avoid spreading rumors while emergency teams worked to bring the fire under control. As of the latest reports, the cause of the fire had not been determined, and officials said establishing the origin would require further investigation once conditions allow.

In a striking twist, Hotel Alto Nevados was itself built on the site of an earlier hotel — the Hotel Termas Minerales de Chillán — that also burned down. The current 99-room hotel, completed around 2014, was constructed with a lightweight steel structure that reused the original building’s wooden trusses, spanning roughly 4,764 square meters. The hotel is known for its ski-in/ski-out access, hot springs, and mountain lodge character, sitting just meters from the neighboring Hotel Nevados de Chillán.

Nevados de Chillán is a year-round mountain destination in the Andes known for skiing and snowboarding in winter and biking and hiking in summer, and it hosted a UCI World Championships mountain biking event on its slopes earlier this year.