Bizarre claims a space laser started the deadly Maui wildfires are shot down after spreading across social media
Five-year-old photos are being shared on social media as evidence that the government used “direct energy weapons” such as lasers to deliberately set off the wildfires that ravaged parts of Maui last week.
Hawaiian officials have said they don’t yet know exactly what caused the wildfires that razed the resort town of Lahaina and killed at least 101 people — leaving room for conspiracy theories to seep online.
Dry conditions on Maui, in addition to low humidity and high winds, created ideal conditions for a wildfire to spread.
In a video posted to Instagram last week, a narrator says the fires were caused by a “direct energy weapon attack.”
‘NB!!!!!!! NO WILD FIRE,’ de video is captioned.
However, experts disproved photos shared on social media of the “lasers” years ago as photos from other events.
A 2018 photo of a controlled burn at an Ohio Marathon Oil plant has been used by internet conspiracy theorists to promote the idea that the government fired space lasers at Maui to start the deadly wildfire
Another photo used to promote the conspiracy is this time-lapse shot of a SpaceX launch in 2018, which appears to have been taken directly from the company’s Instagram page
The narrator of the Instagram video said a friend of his in Hawaii sent him a photo that shows “a laser beam from the sky aimed directly at the city.”
He then refers to a government weather modification program, which he said sprays highly flammable chemicals into the air — no such program is known to exist.
Multiple social media posts using the same image make similar claims about a laser beam fueling the fires in Hawaii.
The photo is actually believed to be from a controlled burn in January 2018 at a Marathon Oil refinery in Canton, Ohio.
The same image, which shows a streak of light and fire on the ground, has previously been used to claim that a meteor touched down in Michigan and ignited a fire. It was also used to claim that a UFO had been shot down or that a missile had hit the US.
Other widely available conspiracy theorists have argued that images of trees still standing after the fire are evidence that the fires were not natural.
One Twitter user wrote, “Everything burned except the trees, but don’t point that out or you’re a conspiracy theorist.”
Online truth seekers, however, were quick to point out the flaw in the argument’s logic.
“Some plants can survive wildfires thanks to a layer of thermal insulation provided by their bark, dead leaves or damp tissues,” read a Britannica article linked by some commentators.
Hawaiian officials aren’t yet sure what sparked the deadly wildfires, but say the dry conditions and high winds created a perfect environment for the fires to spread quickly.
The fire virtually destroyed the entire resort town of Lahaina
A second dramatic laser photo shows a direct beam of light falling through a clear blue sky, seemingly setting part of the land on the ocean ablaze.
That image, however, also from 2018, is a time-lapse photo of a SpaceX rocket launch that appeared to have been taken directly from the company’s Instagram page.
The images have been used to support online theories that the fires were started by the government as a way to push Native Hawaiians off Maui – which would give the government room for its plethora of suspicious projects.
Journalism watchdog Poynter quickly shot down the reports of the lasers and posted a video of her own on social media.
In the video, the organization described the origin of the scattered photos of the alleged space laser.
The group blatantly labeled the claims as “untrue.”
Part of that story is based on a conference held in Maui in January where smart cities were discussed.
The same guy who told the space laser video explained in a separate post, “What they’re not talking about is how in January they had a smart city conference in Maui to make Maui a really smart island, changing everything to electric.” renewable energies, solar panels and pushing everyone into electric vehicles – smart cities of 15 minutes.’
Other knee-jerk reaction theories about the fire include claims that Oprah and Jeff Bezos—both Maui property owners—BlackRock, and real estate companies in general committed mass arson in an attempt to clear the coastal land for themselves.