BY: Abdulraheem Muhammed
Claim:
Social media posts on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook claim that a single home in Los Angeles, which was not burned during a fire outbreak, is a religious abode. Some claim it to be a mosque, others a church, and some assert it is a Muslim home where the Quran is recited daily.
Source: Screenshot from user Facebook
Verdict: Misleading! Verification efforts shows that the viral claim about the survival of a religious abode is not related to this incident. Instead, it stems from misattributed photos and unsubstantiated reports.
Full Text
Social media users have circulated claims that a house that survived a recent fire in Los Angeles did so due to its religious significance or daily Quran recitation.
The fire, reported on January 7, 2025, occurred in Los Angeles and surrounding areas. According to local authorities, the inferno destroyed over 12,300 structures and resulted in 24 fatalities.
Law enforcement sources told NBC News that the fire may have been caused by fireworks or unauthorized camping.
Verification efforts, however, reveal that the viral claim about the survival of a religious abode is not related to this incident. Instead, it stems from misattributed photos and unsubstantiated reports.
Verification
The widely circulated photo of a “surviving home” is from the August 2023 wildfires in Lahaina, Hawaii not the January 2025 fire in Los Angeles.
A reverse image search on yandex results show that there was previous news from people’s news with the below image. The news was published on August 22, 2023, it narrates how the homeowners Trip Millikin and Dora Atwater Millikin recently renovated the house and how it serves as a resistance against the fire.
In another report by BBC NEWS, The British media house published an account of the fire incident in 2023. “Pictures have gone viral of a single red-roofed home that appears virtually unscathed as the neighbourhood around it has been reduced to piles of ash and rubble from the Maui fires.”
Source: screenshot from user X
Another photo purportedly showing a house surviving the Los Angeles fire was found to be AI-generated. A reverse image search on Google confirmed that the image bore the tag “Made with Google AI.”
A Reddit user u/mtfdoris further corroborated this, identifying the photo as created with Google’s Imagen 3 tool.
Source: Screenshot from user X
No verified evidence links the survival of any house to religious practices or its status as a religious abode (mosque, church, or Muslim home). The claims of religious significance are speculative and lack corroboration from credible sources.
Conclusion:
The claim that a single home in Los Angeles survived a fire because it is a religious abode is misleading. The widely shared images either depict a home from the 2023 Lahaina wildfire or are AI-generated. The survival of the red-roof house in Lahaina was due to fire-resistant design and materials, not religious or spiritual factors.
