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Please don't share AI/fake photos of LA icon sites burning (we're trying to survive here) [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-09
I live here in LA. I am disabled, at the poverty level, and won’t be able to afford housing if this place burns up. I’m a wheelchair/cane user and need to be able to evacuate quickly.
Meanwhile, people around social media, and this includes this site, are sharing various photos that are not real. Please stop. Please remove the photos and/or make it clear you are sharing a fake/AI shot.
I spent an hour this morning trying to figure out if one photo was real….
Because I have people who live right under that Iconic Location and they were not on chat this morning.
Snopes has identified several photos of the Hollywood sign that were fake.
Beware of Fake Visuals Showing LA Wildfires Engulfing Hollywood Sign Examples of both were quickly shared across social media and seen thousands of times. One early posting (archived) of the video gathered more than 100,000 views before it was taken down. Snopes readers also contacted us to ask if the visuals were genuine. However, both visuals are fake. The image carries a Grok watermark in the bottom-right corner, as seen in the post above, indicating that it was made using X's artificial intelligence (AI) model. The video likely originated from a TikTok account with a history of producing digital art. We have reached out to the user to confirm how this video was generated and will update this report when we get a response. According to Cal Fire and the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), the Sunset Fire was at least three miles away from the Hollywood sign as of the morning of Jan. 9. Snopes
The photo that set me off searching to see whether my friends are safe, which was published on this site, is a different photo from the ones in that story.
Update at 3:44pm. The photo that prompted my search has been changed to a non-AI photo. Thank you.
Several of my friends live down on that Hollywood plain beneath the sign. When I went to bed last night the fires had reached Hollywood Blvd in some regions and Franklin in another.
I also work just on the other side of that Hollywood sign. I have been in that work building when those hills burned a decade back.
(I had to remain behind as an essential worker until 6pm while our building’s ventilation pumped smoke into our fucking building! Ah, the memories!)
The Difficulty of Evacuation
Evacuation plans are hindered by the fact that we have so many fucking fires right now. Last night on the news they were trying to guide people evacuating the several new fires and keep them from going into areas of other new and old fires. It was a mess.
Wildfires burning in SoCal: Numbers at a glance Here are all the wildfires burning in Southern California at a glance. Sunset Fire in Hollywood Hills area - 43 acres - Evacuations lifted Sunswept Fire in Studio City No official containment numbers as if Thursday at 2:30 a.m. Firefighters remain on scene to fight flare-ups Eaton Fire in San Gabriel Valley - 10,600 acres
- 972 structures destroyed
- 5 deaths Palisades Fire - 17,234 acres - 1,000 structures burned Hurst Fire in Sylmar - 855 acres - 10% contained Lidia Fire in Acton area - 348 acres - 40% contained Woodley Fire in Sepulveda Basin - 30 acres, contained Tyler Fire - 11 acres, contained ABC News Los Angeles
When the Sunset Fire broke out last night, followed by the Sunswept Fire in Studio City, this effectively boxed Burbank and Glendale in between two fires which may or may not grow. (The Eaton Fire in Altadena/Pasadena/Sierra Madre etc. to the NE and these new ones to the SW. Overnight, the forward progress on the Sunset fire has been stopped.)
And there’s always the possibility of another outbreak anywhere.
My Place in This
I live in NE Los Angeles in the foothills in a narrow area where all the streets get blocked up for up to 10 blocks when three trains come through at once and close all the cross streets. I’m between Pasadena and downtown LA, so between the Rose Bowl and Dodger Stadium.
As an example of how squeezed in traffic can get without natural disasters getting in the way:
Once a decade ago the Rolling Stones were in town at the same time as a Dodger game and there was gridlock throughout the east end of the San Fernando Valley (NoHo, Burbank, Glendale), the west end of the San Gabriel Valley (Pasadena to Pomona), and the entire 110 Corridor down to Long Beach, as well the the 10 freeway west to Santa Monica and east to God Knows Where.
In an actual emergency, by the time a fire reaches my area it’s probably too late to get out for many of us who live along the neighborhood I call “The 110 Adjacent.”
This morning
So this morning I checked Watch Duty and area news, but also came here to DK, a reality based community, where I found a photo of the Hollywood sign with burning spots all around it and fire shooting up from behind the hill.
(As mentioned, I work on the other side of that hill, so that flame would mean that fires had grown to Burbank overnight.)
At this point I tried reaching friends (and a co-worker/friend) who live below the Hollywood sign and couldn’t raise them.
About 45 minutes into my searching my boss and I finally chatted and confirmed that a co-worker was okay AND confirmed that the Hollywood sign is not burning and did not burn. So I am a bit less worried as I wait to hear from the others.
(I heard this morning from a friend in an impacted area in Pasadena. He is okay.)
Loss
One of my coworkers who lives near me took her family (newborn and three year old) and left town. Her son’s pre-school burned down.
Many of my coworkers’ children’s schools are gone.
People walked out of the Palisades Fire on night one with burns all over their bodies.
Altadena, the site of the Eaton Fire, is home to a long-thriving African American community, one of few in this ever-more-difficult-to-hold-on Southern California landscape.
All over LA and SoCal, family after family, neighborhood after neighborhood, so many places that we rely on for our daily survival are just gone.
The grief we are all experiencing, while continuing to be vigilant and look out for each other, is beyond description.
My Apartment Complex
I live within 50 feet of the 110 freeway in a rent controlled building with people who, like me, are at or beneath the poverty rate. I have no insurance because I can’t afford health care, food at times, and so on, but I have been surviving. I’m a wheelchair/cane user. I have a $1500 hospital bed where I sleep. I have my important papers next to the door and very little else packed.
There is no replacing many of our homes here in SoCal.
As people who know me on this site know, my landlords have been aggressively evicting my neighbors and harassing the rest of us since last February when the moratorium set in place during the Covid lockdowns were lifted.
The elderly man who lived across from me in my building was evicted for Christmas. (He moved in with family but I don’t know his fate beyond that, and especially not now.)
Five other neighbors were evicted since the moratorium on evicting us was lifted in February 2024 using despicable methods.
While at this point, last I’ve read, the death count of these fires is 5, with many injured, my people, if you will, here in LA, cannot restart. Some can. For many of us, losing our homes puts us on the pathway toward being unhoused. And all these new people have lost their homes, squeezing the housing market even more.
Finally, we have possibly another week of this ahead, on the lookout continually for new fire outbreaks. We’re far from out of this. Another red flag warning will probably be put into effect next Monday-Wednesday.
Please Be Thoughtful
Please try to be thoughtful in the images you choose to use at this time, but also in the words you choose to use along with those false images, or the causes you want to sing to the choir about at this opportune time.
Try to punch up without dribbling spittle and blood down upon us groundlings.
We’re watching the news, checking Watch Duty (Here is the Watch Duty event page for the Eaton Fire), and trying to figure out not only whether to GO or not, as well as trying to figure out whether any one we know had to evacuate overnight, or may be dead.
I’m relieved to know that my friends who live under the Hollywood sign (down on the basin) did not have to evacuate last night.
I hope all our children will have schools again one day.
Final request
Please be safe.
Thank you.
[END]
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