Did laser beam weapons from space cause Hawaii wildfires? Fact Check

Posted by: Sridevi P August 13, 2023

A new conspiracy claim is gaining currency on social media with claims that the recent deadly wildfires in Hawaii islands, United States, were caused by “directed energy weapons.” The context was recent wildfires in Maui, fueled by dry conditions and strong winds during the Hurricane Dora. The wildfires have left the town of Lahaina in Hawaii charred in ruins with at least 55 people killed.

 



 

 

Another claims stated that the Chinese satellite Daqi-1 could have probably targeted laser beams over Hawaii.



Another post read: “The Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) being used on Hawaii are powerful enough to set the Pacific Ocean on fire.” One more questioned the argument that they were caused by natural phenomenon and shared an image as below. Some of them even included images claiming that they show bright beams of light shooting from the sky.



Usually referred to military warfare, directed energy weapons  use concentrated electromagnetic energy fired at the speed of light to annihilate enemy forces and assets, as per the US Government Accountability Office. 

FACT CHECK

When Digiteye India team took it up for search on Google, several such claims made in the past and debunked have surfaced in the results. These claims had gained currency in 2018 when Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, then blamed laser beams from space for causing the 2018 wildfire in California.

Coming to present claims, Hawaii officials told media outlets on Aug. 10 that they don’t yet know what caused the wildfires across the island of Maui. Dry conditions, combined with low humidity and high winds, could have set the stage for the fires to spread, said Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, commander general of the Hawaii Army National Guard, said at an Aug. 9 news briefing.

See the briefing video:



Dr Thomas Smith, an Associate Professor of Environmental Change and Sustainability, who is engaged in research on wildfire emissions and models, shared satellite image showing the parched landscape of the land before the wildfires were triggered.

 

Susan Buchanan, director of public affairs for the National Weather Service, told AFP that they had alerted local officials a week in advance “about dangerous fire weather conditions on the Hawaiian Islands,” issuing official warnings in the days before the inferno began. “A mix of dry vegetation, strong winds, dry subsiding air and low relative humidity helped to spread the deadly fires once they were ignited,” Buchanan said. 
 
Technically, a high-energy laser striking dry vegetation could in theory cause such a fire, said Iain Boyd, director of the University of Colorado’s Center for National Security Initiatives and an expert on directed energy weapons. But the truth is that there is no recorded evidence or explanation that the tragic and devastating fire occurred due to laser beam weapons from the space. 

“We had red flag conditions,” said Arnaud Trouve, chair of the University of Maryland’s Department of Fire Protection Engineering. Trouve said he does not believe the Hawaii blazes should be pinned on “extraordinary sources.” Lightning and other natural phenomena — or human activities such as engineering failures and arson — are more often to blame, he said.

According to Mike Rothschild, an expert on the QAnon movement and author of the book “Jewish Space Lasers”, “It works on the lack of basic understanding that conspiracy believers have of how fire and wind work,” Rothschild said. “The theory is especially adaptable to social media because it fits with pictures taken of fires that show beams of light supposedly coming from space.”

Hence, the claim is false and doesn’t hold scientific evidence. 
 
Claim: Did space lasers start the Hawaii wildfires?
Conclusion: FALSE. No evidence and experts cite many climate change conditions conducive for wildfires prior to Hurricane Dora. 
Rating: Misleading —

About Sridevi P

Sridevi, a business management graduate from Osmania University, Hyderabad has contributed fact-checks whenever she found time. She can be reached at psridevi@digiteye.in