While weather conditions overnight helped control some fires, the largest were still active, with adverse conditions expected throughout the day, Security Minister Luis Cordero said at a news briefing on Monday.
"The projection we have today is of high temperatures," Cordero said, and the main worry was that new fires would be triggered throughout the region.
Parts of central and southern Chile were under extreme heat warnings with temperatures expected to reach up to 37C.
Most of those killed were in Penco, a small coastal city just north of the regional capital of Concepcion. On Monday morning, thousands of residents in the area sifted through the rubble of their homes as firefighters continued to extinguish nearby fires.
Authorities say 325 homes have been destroyed and 1100 more are being evaluated.
As of late Monday afternoon, Chile's CONAF forestry agency said firefighters were combating 34 fires across the country, the largest of which were in regions of Nuble and Bio Bio, where President Gabriel Boric declared a state of catastrophe.
Over 35,000 hectares have been razed so far, with the largest fire surpassing 14,000 hectares on the outskirts of the coastal city of Concepcion.
Miguel Castillo, a professor and researcher at the University of Chile's Forest Fire Laboratory, said a number of factors made the recent fires so deadly, including the amount of dry material and persistent high temperatures.
"There have been several consecutive days over 30 degrees and for the Concepcion area that's rare," Castillo said. "One or two days are common, but not four or five."
Castillo added that fires are more difficult to put out once they reach a certain size and have been complicating by strong, shifting winds.
"With those extreme conditions, it practically becomes an uncontrollable monster," he said, adding that most fires last two or three days, but the risk is multiple active fires combining before authorities can control them.
27°C