| schema:text
| - On Jan. 9, 2025, about two days after the onset of the deadly Pacific Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles, Associated Press (AP) photographer Mark J. Terrill captured an image that would go viral as a "beacon of hope" — an apparently unscathed, baby-blue, retro Volkswagen van parked on a street amongst the burnt rubble of a Malibu neighborhood:
Though other photos or video show that the vehicle sustained some damage in the fire, it is true that the photo authentically captured a 1977 Volkswagen van that somehow survived a raging fire that took out every home surrounding it.
As reported by the AP, the van had initially been purchased by Preston Martin, a surfboard maker, who lived in it during his senior year of college:
Martin purchased the 1977 Volkswagen Type 2 somewhat on a whim sometime around his junior year studying mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
His mother, Tracey Martin, of Irvine, yelled at him for blowing his money, but Martin told her he'd save on rent by fixing up the inside and living in it his senior year, which he did. She came to love the bus, and sewed curtains for the windows.
Martin then sold the car to a friend, Megan Weinraub, in 2024. The last time both Martin and Weintraub saw the car, according to the AP, was after a day of surfing on Jan. 5, 2025, when they left it parked on the street near Weinraub's home. Two days later, she fled the fire in her regular vehicle.
The area, at the time of the viral photograph, had been closed to the public since the evacuation order was issued, but several news crews besides the Associated Press had also independently documented the presence of the van. A local Fox News syndicate ran helicopter footage that captured images of the van on Jan. 16:
Based on this footage, using the existence of the van's black rack and proximity to a "Stop Ahead" warning painted on the road, Snopes was able to locate the van in an ultra-high resolution satellite image of damage caused by the Palisades fire, taken by Maxar, on Jan. 10, 2025:
A local NBC News affiliate investigated the van in person, finding some damage on the side of the van that faced homes that once stood on the road:
Because the existence of this van has been documented numerous times by multiple sources and because the van does actually show some evidence of burn damage, the claim that the viral AP image authentically shows a van that survived the Palisades fire is true.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)