Teams combating deadly wildfires in Los Angeles have received offers of assistance from around the world, but claims that a video shows South African firefighters singing in an airport as they make their way to California are false. The footage dates to 2023 when a crew arrived in the Canadian city of Edmonton to join the emergency response to record-breaking blazes impacting the province of Alberta.
"Group of South African Firefighters who have landed in Canada to make their way to LA, to help," says a January 9, 2025 Threads post.
© AFP
The claim circulated elsewhere on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
California continues to experience critical fire conditions as hot, powerful winds threaten to rekindle major fires that devastated the hills and Los Angeles suburbs. As of January 14, the blazes killed at least 24 people, displaced more than 90,000 and left swathes of America's second-largest city in ruins.
A massive firefighting effort, bolstered by teams from across the western United States and neighboring countries continues to fight the flames, with offers of aid from around the world. However, the posts claiming to show South African firefighters coming to aid the fight are falsely sharing unrelated footage.
A reverse image search led to the same video on the YouTube channel of Canadian broadcaster CTV News, posted June 9, 2023 (archived here).
A keyword search uncovered the same video published on the CTV News website on June 15, 2023 under the headline: "A second group of South African firefighters helping Alberta crews during a record spring wildfire season landed in Edmonton on June 15, 2023" (archived here).
The arrival was also reported on the same date by Canada's Global News and CityNews Edmonton (archived here and here).
AFP reported that in June 2023, about 1,000 firefighters from Australia, France, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States arrived in Canada to bolster firefighting efforts during a historic wildfire season.
More of AFP's reporting on misinformation about the Los Angeles fires can be found here.
