Claim: A video shows a firefighting plane crashing shortly after takeoff while attempting to douse a fire in Los Angeles in January 2025.
Fact: The video actually shows a firefighting plane that crashed in January 2024 in Chile. It has no connection to the January 2025 Los Angeles fires.
On 11 January 2025, Threads user @mental_case21 posted (archive) a clip showing an airplane crashing on a road. The accompanying caption reads as follows:
“امریکہ کے شہر لاس اینجلس میں لگی آگ کو بجھانے کے لیے ایک بڑا ہوائی جہاز پانی بھر کر اُڑتے ہی گر کر تباہ اور جل کر راکھ ہو گیا، پانی سے بھرا جہاز 5 سیکنڈ میں گر کر تباہ ہوگیا بے شک اللہ کی لاٹھی بے آواز قدرت کے آگے ساری مشینریاں بے بس ہیں
[A large aeroplane filled with water to extinguish the fires in Los Angeles, USA, crashed and burned to ashes right after takeoff. The water-filled aeroplane crashed within five seconds. Indeed, the mills of God grind slowly. All machinery is helpless before nature.]”
Los Angeles is currently battling at least five major fires, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE or CDFFP), which noted (archive) that as of 14 January 2025, a total of 38,724 acres have been burned. The blazes include the Palisades fire, Eaton fire, Hurst fire, Auto fire, and the Little Mountain fire.
While authorities have not yet provided a definitive cause of the Los Angeles fires, investigations by The Washington Post and The New York Times suggested that remnants of a New Year’s Eve blaze may have played a role.
Both publications also identified on the map the approximate point where the fire started, which is extremely close to a “burn scar” left after the aforementioned New Year’s Eve blaze next to the Temescal Ridge trail near Skull Rock.
At least 25 people are dead, as of 13 January 2025, The Associated Press reported.
Fact or Fiction?
A reverse-image search using keyframes from the viral video led us to this 17 January 2024 post on a Greek blog providing updates on “defence, security, and geostrategic issues”. Translated to English, its headline reads, “Chile: Firefighter aircraft crashes, falls into cables.”
We then searched for “Chile Firefighter aircraft crashes, falls into cables” and came across this 16 January 2024 video report by The Telegraph about the same incident.
The accompanying caption reads, “A Chilean firefighter plane crashed into a road in a fiery inferno after it snagged on electricity poles while flying low. The crash, which killed the pilot and injured four other people, took place on a road near the Panguilemo Aerodrome in Talca, a commune in Chile’s Maule region, on Monday afternoon.”
Using information from this, as well as the name of the deceased pilot, the 58-year-old Fernando Solans Robles, we found other news articles about the crash.
Relevant image-based results also led to Spanish video reports from 16 January 2024. Articles by El Periódico and El Español focused on Solans’ background and how his father, also a pilot, had died in a “plane on his way back from fumigation work in Africa”.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the viral video is not from the recent Los Angeles fires but shows a plane crash in Chile from January 2024.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim here on Threads, here, here, and here on Instagram, here, here, and here on YouTube, here, here, and here on X (formerly Twitter).
Some of the Facebook posts that gained significant traction can be found here, here, here, here, and here; they garnered over 565,000, 393,000, 89,000, 80,000, and 64,000 views, respectively, as of writing time.
Conclusion: The viral video is not from the recent Los Angeles fires but shows a plane crash in Chile from January 2024.
Background image in cover photo: eberhard grossgasteiger
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