No, these guys aren’t looters – they are heroes of the LA fires
Fires have ravaged the American city of Los Angeles since January 7 and, according to a number of accounts on X and Instagram, thieves are taking advantage of the catastrophe. To illustrate these claims, the accounts have been sharing two videos they say document looters in the act. But the local journalist who filmed the videos says they actually show people helping a family save their belongings when fire reached their property, a story confirmed by a local TV report.
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Do these videos show people looting a home in Los Angeles after its residents fled the wildfires? That’s what a number of X accounts have been claiming since these videos began circulating on January 9.
"Reports of lots of looting in Los Angeles now,” reads a post featuring one of the videos by Open Source Intel. The post garnered more than three million views.
These two videos weres first posted on Instagram on January 9 by an account called The Chingon Mexican, which describes itself as an account for conservatives in the Mexican-American community.
"Looters seen going through homes,” reads The Chingon Mexican’s post, which features one of the videos. The account claims these videos, which each last about ten seconds, show people looting in broad daylight.
The first excerpt features a young man wearing a hoodie coming out of a home carrying a large white bag (see below). He carries it across the street. The second video shows two men carrying a large television out of the front door of the same home.
An evacuation, not home looting
It turns out that these videos actually show friends helping a family to save their belongings when their neighbourhood, located in a Los Angeles suburb, began to burn.
Our team ran the two viral videos through a reverse image search (check out our handy guide to find out how). We discovered that they were first shared by an LA-based photojournalist named Jamie Lee Taete as an Instagram story. The footage was then posted on YouTube.
Our team emailed Taete, who said that he had filmed these videos on January 9 around noon in the town of Altadena and that the people in the video weren’t pillaging: "The people in the video are not looting. They were helping the person who lived in the house move their items to safety across the street."
Local TV channel KTLA 5 also broadcast a report about the same home, which several social media users noticed, as did Shayan Sardarizadeh, who specialises in fact checking. In KTLA’s report, which was broadcast on January 9 and is now available on its YouTube channel, the journalist explains that the “basically the folks who lived here and their friends emptied this house out”.
In the report, the journalist interviews the woman who tells the journalist that the people gathered, including her son, helped her empty the home after the fire reached their yard.
"They got what they could get,” she says, explaining that they saved photos and diplomas.
The woman then explains that their belongings were moved to the other side of the street. They are shown in the report.
Friends and family, not thieves
This context helped us to understand what is really going on in the two video excerpts that went viral. In the first excerpt, the young man wearing a hoodie who is carrying a white bag is just bringing the family’s belongings to safety on the other side of the street. The two people carrying the television out of the home are trying to save it from the fire. It is the opposite of looting – they are heroes.
KTLA’s news broadcast provides further proof that the people in the video are close to the family who lived there. The man in the hoodie lingers on the stoop for several minutes. The young man wearing a red hoodie and a grey beanie, who was carrying the television in one of videos that went viral, also appears in the TV report and the woman who lives in the home describes him as one of the friends and family members who helped her.
By the afternoon of January 10, the posts shared by Open Source Intel and The Chingon Mexican were no longer available online. A Community note – which allows X users to add context for posts that may be false or misleading – was added to Open Source Intel’s post featuring a link to KTLA’s news report.
National Guard deployed to Los Angeles
There have been a number of fake news stories about the LA fires circulating online since the fires began on January 7. Our team debunked several photos and videos said to show the iconic Hollywood sign damaged by the fire – turns out, the images were digitally altered or AI-created.
Watch moreNo, the Hollywood sign is not on fire
However, some looting has taken place. On January 9, more than 20 people were arrested on suspicions of looting, according to the Los Angeles Times. Governor Gavin Newsom also announced that National Guard troops had been deployed to prevent theft and said that no looting would be “tolerated”.
Los Angeles county sheriff Robert Luna also announced that he wanted to put in place a curfew to prevent further looting.
By January 15, more than 100,000 California residents had been evacuated and at least 25 people had died in the fires.