Fierce wildfires are raging in the Los Angeles area, fueled by powerful Santa Ana winds, sending residents fleeing from burning homes through flames and towering clouds of smoke. Thousands of firefighters were battling at least three separate blazes on Jan. 8, from the Pacific coast inland to Pasadena.
Dramatic footage has emerged from the fires, including two videos that appear to show animals being rescued from the blaze. One shows a man running to rescue a rabbit and has hundreds of thousands of views, and the other shows a man pleading with firefighters to save his cat. That video has amassed millions of views.
People in the comments have questioned whether the videos are from the recent fires burning in the Los Angeles area. VERIFY often fact-checks viral social media clips that appear to show scenes of natural disasters or breaking news, to help ensure our readers don’t share outdated or inaccurate information.
THE QUESTION
Are these animal rescue videos from the January wildfires in California?
THE SOURCES
- Video published by NBC Los Angeles in July 2024
- Video published by BBC News in December 2017
- InVid and RevEye, video and photo forensics tools
THE ANSWER
No, these animal rescue videos aren’t from the January wildfires in California.
WHAT WE FOUND
Videos showing the rescue of a rabbit and a cat were widely circulated as wildfires in Southern California raged from the Pacific coast inland to Pasadena in early January, but these videos aren’t from the current fires.
Using InVid, a video forensics tool, VERIFY analyzed the videos and conducted a reverse image search of each frame for both.
We traced the video of the rabbit rescue back to this video published by BBC News on Dec. 7, 2017. It was filmed near La Conchita, California during the Thomas Fire. By comparing the two videos, we confirmed the man in the video and the rescue scene are the same.
La Conchita is approximately 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles, where the current wildfires are burning. The Thomas Fire burned over 280,000 acres, destroyed hundreds of buildings and forced thousands to evacuate, becoming one of California’s largest recorded wildfires at the time.
The dramatic video of a man rescuing his cat was taken in July 2024 and published by NBC Los Angeles. According to their report, the man’s home in Tarzana, California, caught fire and firefighters were able to rescue his 14-year-old cat, Cheetah, who survived the blaze. It was not caused by a wildfire.
The January 2025 wildfires burning in the Los Angeles areas have so far resulted in two deaths, the loss of over 1,000 structures, and the evacuation of at least 70,000 people, according to the Associated Press. At the time of writing, the fire burned more than 22,000 acres and was at 0% containment.