Video of Fire at Parking Lot in Australia Shared as One From France

This is an old video from Australia and is unrelated to France protests.

A video showing several parked cars on fire is going viral on social media.

What's the claim?: The claim states that this visual is from the ongoing protests happening in France and blames the Muslims population for this.

What's happening in France?: France has been witnessing violent protests after the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old teenager who was allegedly killed at the hands of the police for driving a car without a license.

• The country's public had been clashing with the police and damaging public property by burning and dismantling it.

(Similar claims can be seen here and here.)

What's the truth?: This video is old and from Perth, Australia when the Pickles parking lot caught fire, damaging over 60 vehicles.

• It is unrelated to France or any other protests.

How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the video and came across a tweet carrying the same video.

• This tweet was posted on 28 April by a Twitter user named Jacey Knowles, and it was a reply to another tweet about a fire in Pickles parking lot in Australia.

Engulfed in black smoke and our border collie picked up the scent before we even saw smoke pic.twitter.com/BLuR6tEwZJ

— jacey knowles (@JaceyKnowles) April 28, 2023

• Taking a cue, we performed a relevant keyword search on Google and came across several news reports about the fire in the parking lot.

• We found reports from April by Sky News Australia, 7NEWS Australia, The West Australia, ABC News and The Guardian.

• The report by The Guardian stated that a massive fire broke out at the Pickles car parking lot in Australia's Perth suburb of Bibra Lake on 28 April.

• It also added that the fire destroyed over 60 vehicles.

• The article also carried a tweet by Knowles which had four different videos of the incident.

• The viral video also matched two of these videos. Here's a comparison:

Statement from Pickles parking lot: We found an official media statement released by Pickles company regarding the fire that broke out on 28 April.

• It stated that a fire broke out in a storage yard that housed salvage vehicles at the Pickles Bibra Lake branch.

• The fire affected 60 salvage vehicles and associated racking.

• The statement was released on 29 April, and the authorities were still investigating the cause of the fire.

Conclusion: An old video of  Australia's parking lot on fire is being falsely shared as a video from the violent protests France.

(With inputs from Aishwarya Varma. )

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