Viral video shows men helping woman flee California wildfires, not 'looters' | Fact check
The claim: Video shows ‘looters' during California wildfires
A Jan. 9 Threads post (direct link, archive link) shows a man carrying white bags down a street as smoke clouds fill the sky behind him. It then cuts to another video of two men carrying a television through the front door of a house.
“Looters seen going through homes," the post's caption reads.
The Threads post was reposted more than 400 times in a day. Similar versions of the claim circulated widely on Instagram and on X.
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Our rating: False
The video is miscaptioned. A television news report makes clear the men it shows were helping a woman evacuate her home, not looting it.
Video shows men aiding evacuation, not looting
A series of deadly wildfires scorched more than 50 square miles of the greater Los Angeles area, destroying more than 10,000 structures and killing at least 10 people, officials said. As the fires burned, authorities announced the arrests of at least 20 people suspected of looting.
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But in the video posted to Threads, there is no looting taking place, and the post provides no evidence to support the claim. In an interview with a Los Angeles television station, the woman who lives in the house identified the men as acquaintances of hers who were helping her flee the approaching fires by taking her belongings to a safer location.
The number on the house – located at 161 West Woodbury Road in Altadena, California – is visible in both the Threads video and in the news story, in which the reporter says at one point, “The folks who live here and their friends emptied this house out of a bunch of their stuff, just in case the fire got here.”
The man shown on Threads carrying white bags along Woodbury Road is shown in the news footage walking through the front door of the home and is dressed identically in a navy blue hooded sweatshirt and gray athletic pants. The man in the red sweatsuit, who can be seen carrying the television in the Threads post, appears moments later in the news broadcast as part of the crowd of people identified by the occupant of the house as her friends and family members who were helping her comply with an evacuation order.
“They told us to leave, and we got what we could,” the woman said during the broadcast. “We’re trying to get our stuff.”
Paste BN previously debunked false claims that an image shows flames engulfing the iconic Hollywood Sign and that the Los Angeles Fire Department asked “anyone with firefighting experience” to assist with the blazes.
The Threads user who shared the post told Paste BN the caption of the video posted to Instagram was edited after learning the men were not looting the residence. In the version the account shared to Threads, however, the caption's characterization of the men as "looters" was not changed. Paste BN did not immediately receive responses from the other social media users contacted.
Our fact-check sources
- KTLA-TV (YouTube), Jan. 8, KTLA Wildfire Coverage
- Google Maps, accessed Jan. 10, 161 West Woodbury Road, Altadena, California
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