How accurate are images of the Maui wildfires? – BBC News

 

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