Video shot in Chile falsely linked to Hawaii wildfires
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on August 21, 2023 at 08:56
- 4 min read
- By SHIM Kyu-Seok, AFP South Korea
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"I was warned not to post this video of what really happened in Hawaii," reads the Korean-language caption of a clip shared here on Telegram on August 14.
The five-second video appears to show a beam of light striking a street corner and setting it alight.
The post links to an identical English-language post published on Rumble, where user comments suggest it shows "directed energy weapons at work".
AFP has debunked a wave of misinformation saying the Maui fires -- the deadliest in the United States in over a century -- were started by "directed energy weapons" such as lasers here, here and here. At least 114 people have died in the disaster, with the death toll further expected to rise.
Similar false posts were shared by South Korean social media users here on Facebook, as well as here and here on Naver Blog.
The video was also widely shared alongside false claims it was filmed in Maui across various languages including English, French, German, Dutch and Turkish.
But the video was filmed in May in the Chilean capital Santiago -- not Hawaii.
Transformer fire
A Google reverse image search of keyframes from the clip found a corresponding, higher resolution video posted on TikTok by a user called "piersolisv" on TikTok on May 26, 2023 -- months before the Maui wildfires (archived link).
The video's Spanish-language caption reads: "Context: A friend in his apartment in Macul, the lights went out, an explosion went off, he leaned out and saw this lightning 5 times (which for me is more a laser than lightning). The one in the video is the last one that exploded..."
Below are screenshot comparisons of the clip shared in the false posts (left) and the TikTok video (right):
Using the TikTok user's description, AFP was able to geolocate the footage on Google Earth to an area in the neighbourhood of Macul in Santiago, located near an agricultural school.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the scene in the TikTok video (left) and Google Earth (right), with corresponding structures marked by AFP:
Local broadcaster Chilevision News reported on May 30 the beam seen in the footage was likely caused by light reflecting off the camera (archived link).
The report shows an interview with Humberto Verdejo, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Santiago de Chile, saying the explosion seen in the video was likely caused by a tree branch that collided with a utility pole due to strong gusts in the city that day (archived link).
'Crazy allegations'
While the US government has yet to determine the exact cause of the Maui fires, experts have pointed out there were several "red flag conditions" such as dry vegetation and strong winds before the fires started.
Susan Buchanan, director of public affairs for the National Weather Service, told AFP the agency alerted local officials up to a week in advance "about dangerous fire weather conditions on the Hawaiian Islands" and had issued warnings in the days before the inferno began (archived link).
"A mix of dry vegetation, strong winds, dry subsiding air and low relative humidity helped to spread the deadly fires once they were ignited," Buchanan said in an August 11 email.
Michael Gollner, a fire dynamics researcher at the University of California-Berkeley, said suggestions that energy weapons started the Maui fires were "obviously crazy allegations".
He said the blaze may have been sparked by power lines damaged in the winds or any other potential accidental source. "With winds this severe and a large amount of dry grass surrounding the community, there is no need for an ignition from 'space'."
Mike Rothschild, an expert on the QAnon movement and author of the book "Jewish Space Lasers" told AFP similar conspiracy theories began spreading widely after the California wildfires of the 2010s.
"It works on the lack of basic understanding that conspiracy believers have of how fire and wind work," Rothschild said. "The theory is especially adaptable to social media because it fits with pictures taken of fires that show beams of light supposedly coming from space."
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