The Smokehouse Creek Fire that broke out in Texas on Feb. 26 has burned through an estimated 850,000 acres, becoming Texas’ second-largest wildfire ever recorded, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
Social media users provided updates and information on where to donate money or supplies. A Feb. 27 Facebook post attached two photos showing land covered in fire and smoke.
“Friends!! Our TEXAS PANHANDLE is on fire!! They’re evacuating parts of it as we speak,” the caption read.
(Screenshot from Facebook)
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
But the first photo doesn’t show the Smokehouse Creek fire; it was first posted in 2017.
A reverse-image search showed that the photo was used in a Texas Monthly feature published in August 2017 about three people who died in a fire in Texas’ Gray County in March 2017.
The photo was posted seven years ago; it does not show the current Smokehouse Creek fire. We rate that claim False.
Truth-o-meter Ruling
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The photo was uploaded in 2017, in a feature about a fire in Gray County, Texas.
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Statement
Context
a Facebook postSpeaker/Target
Statement Date
Our Sources
CBS News, In two days, the Smokehouse Creek Fire has grown to be the second-largest in Texas history, Feb. 28, 2024
The Washington Post, How Texas’s Smokehouse Creek Fire became state’s second-largest ever, Feb. 28, 2024
X Post by Texas A&M Forest Service, Feb. 28, 2024
Facebook post (archived), Feb. 27, 2024
Texas Monthly, Love and Loss on the Great Plains, August 2017
KFDA-TV, 3 killed in Gray County fire, March 6, 2017
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