No, these houses are not the sole survivors of LA wildfire | Fact check
The claim: Images show the only two houses spared in January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires
Footage in a Jan. 12 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) alternates between two images of houses. The first is photographed from the front and is surrounded by a burned natural landscape. The second is shown from above and appears to be surrounded by a burned neighborhood.
"the only house survive (sic) during the wildfire in L.A," reads text above the footage.
The post was shared more than 9,000 times in five days.
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Our rating: False
Media images and other data show more than two homes have survived the Los Angeles area wildfires. One image in the post is more than a decade old. The other appears to be a digital creation, according to experts.
Post includes house from Washington and likely digital creation
At least 27 people are dead in wildfires that continue to burn in southern California. Thousands of structures have burned, but media images show that far more than two houses have survived the fires even in heavily impacted areas.
A Los Angeles County website depicting fire damage within the Palisades neighborhood fire perimeter also shows many surviving structures.
The first house in the Facebook post is not located in Southern California. The residence survived a wildfire in Washington state in 2012, according to media reports from that time.
Fact check: Which claims about LA fires are true or false? The latest fact-check roundup
The second image in the post does not appear to show a real house at all.
"This image appears to be a low-quality AI-generated scene," Walter Scheirer, a Notre Dame professor who studies digital imagery manipulation, told Paste BN. "It isn't photorealistic and is cartoon-like in appearance."
He also said the design of the house is unusual and that he was only able to find other examples of the image in social media posts.
Siwei Lyu, a computer scientist and media forensics researcher at the University of Buffalo, also told Paste BN that the image was very likely to be AI-generated after analyzing it with his lab's AI detection software, DEEPFAKE-O-METER.
He also conducted a visual analysis and found that perspective in the image is unrealistically distorted.
Paste BN reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Our fact-check sources
- Walter Scheirer, Jan. 16, Email exchange with Paste BN
- Siwei Lyu, Jan. 17, Email exchange with Paste BN
- CNN, Jan. 15, Why some structures may have withstood the Los Angeles area wildfires – while those next door burned to the ground
- Daily Mail, Aug. 15, 2012, Last house standing: The Washington home miraculously spared by INCHES from wildfires that destroyed dozens of others
- Daily News, Aug. 16, 2012, Washington state house narrowly survives raging wildfires that have scorched the north west
- NBC News, Aug. 16, 2012, Lone house, surrounded by scorched earth, survives wildfire
- LA County Recovers, accessed Jan. 16, Palisades Fire Damage Maps
- AZ Central, Jan. 10, Devastation of LA fires seen from the air: Flyover of Pacific Palisades, Malibu
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