the number of dead from Hawaii's
devastating wildfires has climbed to 99
with about 1300 people still unaccounted
for from the moment the fires began
incredible images began to appear online
but how accurate are they well Cheyenne
Charles from BBC verify has been taking
a look
past the island of Maui Hawaii have been
devastated by one of the worst wildfires
in its history the exact cause of the
fires are kind of unknown and under
investigation however that hasn't
stopped viral misinformation from being
shared and viewed millions of Times
online here are a couple of examples
we've been looking at this video has
been shared on the platform X and viewed
more than 11 million times it claims to
show a massive explosion in Maui just
before the wildfires however this video
is false how do we know this well we
found this video of the exact same
incident posted to the platform Tech
talk back in May as you can see there's
a Chilean flag and some text in Spanish
and it says this was an explosion at a
power plant at the time we found a
report by a Chilean TV network that
confirmed this was precisely the case
here's another example
this image has been viewed more than
three million times and as you can see
it says the wildfires were not a natural
event and were caused by a massive
explosion but
this image is also false now how do we
know this one well we found this image
of the exact same explosion posted to
Facebook back in January 2018. now local
reports at the time said this was a
controlled burn at an Ohio oil refiner
that beam of light is in fact an optical
illusion which is formed on a very cold
day now these are only a couple of
examples however these false claims are
still being shared online and we're
still checking and we'll keep you
updated
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