Video of people making call to prayer to cool down LA wildfires

Rating Justification

The iVerify Pakistan team investigated this content and determined that it is misleading.

To reach this conclusion, iVerify Pakistan conducted a reverse image search to find the original source of the video.

Posts from many users on social media platform X since January 12, 2025, shared a video of men lined up and chanting the Muslim call to prayer (Azaan), claiming that they were doing so to control the Los Angeles wildfires. However, the video is old and has been shared as far back as June 2022 at least around the time of a supermarket fire in Karachi.

Six simultaneous blazes have ripped across wide areas of Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades since Jan 7, killing at least 14 people. At least 16 people are estimated to be missing. The death toll is expected to rise.

The inferno has damaged or destroyed 12,000 structures, according to US officials, reducing whole neighbourhoods to smouldering ruins, destroying the homes of the rich and famous and ordinary folk alike and leaving an apocalyptic landscape.

HOW IT STARTED:

On Jan 12, a user shared a video on X of men lined up wearing green rescue jackets and turbans as they gave the call to prayer. The video also showed lots of smoke and a fire engine in the background.

The post was captioned, “Los Angeles Fire, USA: When all efforts and technology failed, the call to prayer had to be raised. Half of America is in flames, half of America is in snow. Indeed, God is the only superpower.”

The video received 187,500 views and was shared 1,900 times.

The footage was also widely shared by other users on X as can be seen here, here and here.

METHODOLOGY

A fact-check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to its virality and the high influx of content related to the ongoing fires in Los Angeles which have grabbed significant public attention and interest.

A reverse image search yielded various results from June 2022, one being from local media blog Parhlo that reported on a supermarket fire in Karachi that occurred on June 1, 2022.

The blog contained many X posts from around that date claiming that the video showed a group of men trying to cool down the supermarket fire by making the call to prayer.

A June 1, 2022, news story by leading English media outlet Dawn.com reporting on the supermarket fire near Jail Chowrangi also coincided with the timeline of the video being shared on X.

Therefore, even though it could not be conclusively determined if the video was related to the Jail Chowrangi supermarket fire in Karachi, it was confirmed that the footage was not linked to the Los Angeles wildfires in any way.

FACT-CHECK STATUS: MISLEADING

The claim that a viral video shows a group of men trying to cool down the LA wildfires by giving the call to prayer is misleading.

The video was shared as far back as at least the Karachi supermarket fire near Jail Chowrangi in June 2022 with lots of smoke and a fire engine in the video. Therefore, even if it could not be conclusively determined that the video was from Karachi, the video at least showed that it was indeed from a setting with a fire emergency at hand.

Evidence and References

June 4, 2022, Parhlo blog:
https://www.parhlo.com/put-out-fire-by-giving-azaan/

June 1, 2022, Dawn news report:
https://www.dawn.com/news/1692593