As the deadly January 2025 Los Angeles-area wildfires continued to burn, online users shared a rumor claiming a set of photos showed a Christian man's home with a red roof untouched by the blazes. The users' posts claimed the homeowner "was protected by God."
Numerous Facebook users shared the rumor with four different pictures. Some users shared the photos as a single screenshot. Three of the pictures showed homes with red roofs seemingly undamaged in neighborhoods decimated by flames. The fourth image displayed a man wearing a face mask.
These users' posts carried copied-and-pasted text, reading, "This is the home of a Christian in Los Angeles, California. While the houses around him were destroyed by fire, his house remained untouched. God's promise in Psalm 91:1-6 was fulfilled. You can't imagine how much he cried for joy, knowing he was protected by God. Truly, God is his refuge."
However, these posts misled users. While the man pictured wearing a face mask did say he believed God saved his home from the fires — as did at least one other L.A.-area resident — the in-question pictures of houses bore no relation to the January 2025 blazes. Further, the three photos of homes depicted two completely different houses — a detail unnoticed by users who shared and commented on the rumor.
The Facts About All Four Photos
Two of the photos depicted an oceanfront home with a red roof spared from flames during the August 2023 Maui wildfires in Hawaii. At the time, the Australian news website news.com.au reported the owner of the "miracle" home attributed the structure's survival to its heavy-gauge metal roof.
A genuine aerial image shows a red-roof house that survived the August 2023 wildfires in Lahaina, Hawaii. (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
The third picture of a different house with a red roof (below) was fake. According to Google, an unknown user generated the image with an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool offered by the tech company — possibly the Google DeepMind text-to-image generator Imagen 3.
A user generated this picture with AI.
We credit Reddit user u/mtfdoris with confirming the above photo's inauthenticity. The user made a comment under a Reddit post about the picture, saying performing a reverse-image search with Google Images and selecting the tab "About this image" revealed the context, "Made with Google AI," as seen in the screenshot below. The first link displayed under that context showed a Threads user (archived) incorrectly claiming, "Y'all this is not n [sic] AI GENERATED PHOTO THIS IS REAL."
A Google Images reverse-image search for the third photo revealed the words, "Made with Google AI."
The fourth image of the man wearing a face mask originated from a video interview. 7NEWS Australia published the clip on Instagram on Jan. 9, 2025. In the clip, an unidentified man who said the L.A.-area fires impacted his neighborhood told the interviewer God saved his house. "I shouldn't be crying because my entire block is burned down. But God saved my house." Then, at a loss for words, he continued, "Why are all my neighbors? Why are they? In the middle of two burnt down blocks, there's one house standing, and that's mine."
We contacted 7NEWS Australia to ask for identifying information about the man and will update this story if we receive a response.