Chile's government said Monday it is maintaining a state of emergency in the port city of Valparaiso, where a raging forest fire has killed 13 people and destroyed about 2,000 homes since Saturday.

"We're continuing the (state of) emergency, due to the fact that the fire has not been brought under total control," government spokesman Alvaro Elizalde said.

"Valparaiso's outlook is devastating, thousands of people have lost everything," said Elizalde.

On Monday, nearly 2,000 firefighters are battling the massive blaze for a third day, which has destroyed almost 850 hectares of land between the city and the surrounding forests.

Chile's President Michelle Bachelet on Monday expressed her condolences to "the affected families," and assured area residents that "both the government and local and regional agencies bare doing everything they can."

Bachelet presided over a meeting with ministers and other officials to outline a strategy to fight what is being called the worst fire in the port's history, promising "a greater aerial operation to overcome the emergency."

Authorities estimate that some 8,000 people have been affected by the fire that has spread across seven hills at the port, located 110 km from the capital of Santiago.

Affected families will be receiving the sum of 250,000 pesos ( 450 U.S. dollars) to help pay for such items as clothing lost to the fire, the government has announced.

The fire came on the heels of another disaster, a powerful 8.2- magnitude quake that rocked the northern coast of Chile on April 1, destroying numerous buildings and leaving some 3,000 families homeless, mostly in the Tarapaca region.

On Monday, the government assured it had not forgotten about those coastal communities, despite the latest emergency. "Today we are focused on Valparaiso, but what happened in the north continues to concern us," Housing Minister Paulina Sabal said. Endite

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