{"id":212606,"date":"2026-03-10T03:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T03:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/212606\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T03:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T03:50:09","slug":"old-video-of-california-chemical-fire-falsely-linked-to-missile-strikes-on-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/212606\/","title":{"rendered":"Old video of California chemical fire falsely linked to missile strikes on Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran has barraged Israeli cities with missiles after joint US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic republic on February 28, 2026, but footage of an explosion circulating online does not show an attack on Tel Aviv. The video in fact depicts a chemical fire that gutted two industrial buildings in California in 2016.<\/p>\n

“Unexploded Iranian missile found in Tel Aviv detonated when it was approached!” reads Malay-language text over a March 8\u00a0TikTok video<\/a> of a massive explosion.<\/p>\n

Screenshots from the same video<\/a> circulated alongside similar Malay-language posts on Facebook, which further claimed firefighters attempting to control the fire were taken by surprise by the explosion.<\/p>\n

\"<span>Screenshot<\/p>\n

Screenshot of the false TikTok post captured on March 9, 2026, with a red X added by AFP <\/p>\n

The footage also spread in English<\/a>, Arabic<\/a>, and Indonesian<\/a> posts that surfaced after the United States and Israel launched a massive attack<\/a> on Iran on February 28, 2026 that killed its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Both Iran and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group have targeted Tel Aviv in a series of retaliatory strikes, while Israel has also continued to bombard both countries.<\/p>\n

The war has also spread to other countries, with Iran lashing out<\/a> at other nations seen as US or Israeli allies<\/a> (archived here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But the circulating clip is unrelated to the war and was first shared online nearly a decade earlier.<\/p>\n

A reverse image search<\/a> on Google using keyframes<\/a> from the falsely shared clip found footage<\/a> showing the same explosions published by the American broadcaster ABC7 News on June 14, 2016 on its official Facebook page (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The post says the fire was in Maywood, a city in Los Angeles county, California.<\/p>\n

Further keyword searches<\/a> led to the same footage on YouTube<\/a>, shared on June 17, 2016, titled “Maywood, CA Magnesium Explosion” (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"<span>Screenshot<\/p>\n

Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (L) and the June 2016 YouTube clip, with matching elements highlighted by AFP <\/p>\n

According to a Los Angeles Daily News report<\/a> published on June 15, 2016, the chemical fire that broke out at a metals-recycling plant took two days to extinguish and forced 300 residents from their homes (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The explosions were caused by oxygen from water being used to put out the flames creating a chemical reaction with the burning metals, the report said.<\/p>\n

The warehouses seen in the foreground of the explosion can be seen in Google Street View\u00a0imagery<\/a> of Fruitland Avenue in Maywood (archived link<\/a>).<\/p>\n

AFP has debunked a wave of misinformation related to the conflict in Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran has barraged Israeli cities with missiles after joint US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic republic on February 28,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[66808,7,9,8,97702,2821,19378,340,97703,97701,5050],"class_list":["post-212606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-ayatollah-ali-khamenei","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-chemical-fire","tag-facebook","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-retaliatory-strikes","tag-tel-aviv","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}