It became a habit. On social media, every disaster is now an opportunity for thousands of conspiratorial accounts to rewrite history. This time, it was the dramatic fires in Hawaii that were used as leverage to develop conspiracy theories.
Viewed millions of times, a video purports to show the origin of the fire, namely a laser beam that would have been used to ignite the fire. We see a kind of lightning coming from the sky hitting the ground of a city.
Except that this is an excerpt from another video, from two months ago and captured in reality in Chile, in the municipality of Macul. The original video is also available on TikTok with an expanded plan and already went viral last spring.
The Chilean television channel Chilevisión had also deciphered the event: it was the explosion of a transformer, after a fall of branches caused by violent winds.
As for the famous laser, it was actually an optical effect. Indeed, passing the image in slow motion, you can see a first small explosion of the transformer, before the light effect. The latter is simply a reflection due to the camera angle during the second largest explosion from the generator.
Misappropriation of images
Another image shows another alleged laser beam burning down a Hawaiian church during the fires. But as the BBC pointed out, the original photo published by the AP agency does not show this famous laser.
In the same way, many photos or videos that supposedly show “energy weapons” being used in Hawaii are all doctored or from previous events, far from the archipelago. This is, for example, the case of a column of light, photographed in 2018 in Ohio and recovered by conspirators. This type of optical illusion is not uncommon in winter as it is the ice crystals in the air that reflect light. This photo is also in an article in the local press.
Another photo of a “laser” widely used as “evidence” is actually a photo of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket taking off in 2018. It was also posted online by the company itself, and many more of the same type exist on SpaceX’s Flickr . .
Similarly, a meteor that fell on Michigan in 2018, and whose descent was filmed, is regularly used to illustrate these famous sky-sent lasers. Here again, the origin is perfectly known.
Source: BFM TV
