What was claimed
A video shows Greek firefighters giving a deer water during the recent fires in Rhodes.
Our verdict
The video was taken in Spain in July 2022.
Video of firefighters giving deer water is not from Rhodes wildfires
28 July 2023
A video of a deer being given water from a bottle, captioned “Greek firefighters give deer water as wildfires surge”, has been shared on Facebook.
But the video wasn’t taken in Greece, one of several countries in the Mediterranean where wildfires have recently spread. More than 40 people have been killed in the fires in Algeria, Italy and Greece.
The video was first shared online in July 2022 when wildfires were affecting Spain and other parts of Europe. According to local media it was taken in the province of Zamora, Spain.
This isn’t the first heatwave-related misinformation we’ve seen online—we’ve also written about a picture of a melted traffic light that was miscaptioned to say it was taken in Rhodes and Bulgaria. It’s always worth checking if a picture shows what the post says it does before you share it—we have written a guide on how to do so here.
Image courtesy of Stratos Thivaios
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the video was taken in Spain in 2022, not Greece in 2023.