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| - As deadly wildfires raged in Los Angeles in January 2025, a video (archived) circulated online claiming to show South African firefighters landing in Canada on their way to assist in firefighting efforts in California.
The claim circulated across X, as seen above, Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived) and Threads (archived).
However, while the footage does show firefighters from Working on Fire, a government-funded initiative that trains firefighters in South Africa, it shows a group of them arriving (archived) in Edmonton, Canada, in June 2023 to fight local wildfires, as per a release from the South African high commission in Ottawa. We reached out to Working on Fire to confirm when the original video was filmed and whether any of their firefighters are in Los Angeles now. We will update this report if they reply.
Given the post by Working on Fire and the South African high commission release on the deployment, we rate this video miscaptioned.
Trevor Abrahams, the managing director of Working on Fire, posted another angle of the same arrival on X on June 9, 2023. A video containing Abrahams' clip was also posted (archived) on Working on Fire's Facebook page on June 4, 2023. The South African high commission in Ottawa said a group of firefighters left South Africa on June 3, meaning they likely arrived on June 4, when the Working on Fire video was posted. The Working on Fire videos on X and Facebook both have the same starting frame. A person carrying a pink pillow can be seen in Working on Fire's videos and other footage sharing the claim about the firefighters heading to California, indicating that these videos were all from the same arrival on June 4.
(Working on Fire/Facebook & @WoFWildfire/X)
According to Working on Fire, three teams were sent to assist in the Edmonton wildfires during the summer of 2023.
The wildfire season of 2023 was the worst on record for the country, with fires burning more than 15 million hectares (more than 37 million acres), according to local media.
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