A photo of a red-roofed house that survived the Hawaii wildfires in 2023 is being falsely passed off as a scene from the fires in Los Angeles (L.A.), California this month.
Since Jan. 12, Facebook (FB) users have been sharing the photo, which shows the house surrounded by burnt homes. Some wrote captions associating it with the L.A. wildfires, while others speculated in the comment sections that the image was created with artificial intelligence.
These posts are wrong. Through reverse image searching, VERA Files Fact Check found the original photo on Getty Images. Agence France-Presse photojournalist Patrick Fallon took the image on Aug. 10, 2023. It carried the description:
“An aerial image shows a red roofed house that survived the fires surrounded by destroyed homes and buildings burned to the ground in the historic Lahaina in the aftermath of wildfires in western Maui.”
According to reports, the nearly 100-year-old house stood at 271 Front St. in Lahaina town, the former capital of Hawaii.
While the photo of the red-roofed “miracle house” is old and from a different location altogether, media organizations have reported about some houses in L.A. surviving the raging fires as the rest of the other homes in their blocks burned down.
The false posts circulated on FB about five days after wildfires broke out in the L.A. neighborhoods of Palisades, Eaton and Hurst. According to the latest reports, these have killed 25 people, displaced about 150,000 and 40,000 acres of land reduced to ashes.
At least four videos uploaded by FB users collectively garnered 485 reactions, 72 comments, 270 shares and 318,000 views.
