Video of Chile wildfires misattributed to Iran’s attack on Israel

By: Christian Haag
April 15 2024

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Example of videos sharing the false claim on social medias. (Source: Instagram/TikTok/Screenshot/Edited by Logically Facts)

Context

Several videos have gone viral on social media, claiming to show Iran's recent attack on Israel. The nighttime video shows a freeway with a burst of flames behind a bridge. The claims have circulated on Instagram and Twitter. Several videos have also been uploaded on TikTok shortly after the attack, claiming to show the aftermath of Iran’s attack. 

Example of the claim shared online. The TikTok user watermark can be seen in the bottom right corner.
(Source: Instagram/TikTok/Screenshot/Edited by Logically Facts)

However, the video does not show the aftermath of Iran's attack on Israel but the February wildfires in Chile.

In fact

A reverse image search of keyframes from the video led us to a TikTok account called “pat_land." This account was also referenced by user watermarks in several videos recently uploaded on TikTok regarding Iran’s attack on Israel. We found the account Pat_land, whose bio reads “viña del mar 🇨🇱,” and found the original video uploaded on February 3. 

Translated using Deep L from Spanish, the video description reads, “Evacuating #fire #achupallas terrible to see the houses of neighbors and friends on fire but more painful to see the little animals being burnt 🙏 may God help us.”

Achupallas is a neighborhood in the city of Viña del Mar, Chile, that was heavily affected by wildfires in February 2024. The same video was also published on February 4 by Acción Ciudadana Chile, which describes itself as an independent media for citizen information in Chile, showing the fires in Achupallas. 

Pat_land has since deleted all videos posted after November 11, 2023. Before being deleted, the video reached at least 400k likes on TikTok. Logically Facts has contacted the user. 

The claim has also been fact-checked by Venezuelan Fact-checking organization Cazadores De Fake News. They reached the same conclusion and noted that the video had previously been falsely attributed to the Texas wildfires. 

The verdict

The video was originally published on February 3, 2024, during the Chilean wildfires and showed the fires in Achupallas, a neighborhood in Viña del Mar. It does not show the aftermath of Iran’s recent attack on Israel. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.