What was claimed
A video shows the 2025 wildfires in LA.
Our verdict
Incorrect. This video is from 2017.
Old video of fire along Los Angeles highway shared as recent
A video is being shared on social media alongside captions that imply it shows the recent wildfires in LA, which have killed at least 28 people.
Posts shared on Facebook, Threads and X (formerly Twitter) while the fires were active include captions such as “Omg #PrayForCalifornia This Is So Scary Is Like An Apocalyptic Fire What Is Going On Around The World” [sic]. But the video is unrelated to the recent wildfires.
It actually dates back to December 2017, and shows the Skirball Fire along Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. The fire was reportedly caused by an illegal cooking fire at an encampment near the freeway, and destroyed six homes.
We’ve written several fact checks about the LA wildfires, and debunked other miscaptioned videos, an AI-generated image and a digitally created video.
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During breaking news events it’s important to consider whether videos and images shared on social media really show what they claim to. Our guides to verifying misleading videos and pictures can help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because the video is from 2017 and does not show the 2025 LA fires.