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| - Fact Check: Heartbreaking video of dog weeping as its house burns down is NOT from Chile wildfires
A heart wrenching video of a dog pacing around a burning house is being widely shared on social media and people are claiming that the video is from Chile's devastating wildfire. Read on to find out the truth.
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India Today Fact Check
This video is neither recent nor from Chile. It is from a 2020 fire in Tlaquepaque, Mexico.
Chile’s government widened areas under a state of emergency on February 3, amid raging wildfires that reportedly torched over a hundred houses claiming at least 13 lives so far. Chile is enduring a devastating heatwave, with high temperatures and strong winds blowing across the southern and central swaths of the South American country. Per reports, the heatwave is set to continue in the coming days as well, making it more difficult to control forest fires.
Amid hundreds of photos and videos of Chile’s devastating wildfire on social media was a heartbreaking video of a dog pacing around a burning house. In the video, the dog, crying inconsolably, ran back and forth as firefighters tried to put out the fire burning down the house. Those sharing the video claimed that it was from the ongoing wildfires in Chile.
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A person sharing this video on Twitter wrote: “Emergency in Chile. It breaks my heart that your owners are no longer with you. Also, the home where this little dog received love and protection is gone. The reality people have lived in affected areas, across so many places in the last few hours is harsh.” A Mexico-based news website also shared this video with a similar claim in Spanish. Archives of these posts can be found here and here.
AFWA found that this video is neither recent nor from Chile. It is from a 2020 fire in Mexico.
AFWA PROBE
A keyword search led us to the same video shared by a YouTube channel in 2020. The video’s description noted it was shot in Mexico. This meant that the viral video was old, ruling out any links to the ongoing Chile wildfire.
Subsequent refined searches led us to a report from May 2020 about a weeping dog that watched its house burn down in Tlaquepaque, Mexico. It also had a link to a tweet by Enrique Bustos, the person who reportedly captured this emotional sight. The tweet in Spanish roughly translates to: “Today I had the opportunity to record this scene, it is always sad to cover these events, especially when people lose their heritage, that always hurts, but today, this puppy also cried when he saw his house consumed by fire. It made me sad, I will not deny it.”
Another report on this incident stated that on May 13, 2020, there was a fire in the vicinity of the Central de Autobuses in San Pedro Tlaquepaque, Jalisco. The fire reportedly destroyed properties belonging to several carpenters and sellers of wooden furniture. While there were no reports of injuries or loss of life, premises of more than 25 businesses were affected by the fire.
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Per some reports, the dog in the viral video was “Manchas”, and he had been living in the burnt area for three years before the incident. “Trafico Zmg”, a media outlet from Guadalajara in Jalisco, also shared the story of “Manchas” around the same time.
In the video, we also noticed the text “Protection Civil Y Bomberos Tlaquepaque” written on the firefighters’ uniforms. We found that it refers to the Civil Protection unit of the Municipality of Tlaquepaque, Mexico. The cover photo of the official Facebook page of this department featured people wearing the same uniform.
Thus, it’s clear that a video of an old incident from Mexico was wrongly attributed to the recent Chile wildfire.
(Written by Sanjana Saxena)
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