In September 2020, a viral Facebook post alleged that one wildfire in California that was caused by a gender reveal party caused more property damage than all Black Lives Matter protests since May 2020.
Gender reveal party gone wrong
The post referred to a wildfire in the San Bernardino National Forest that authorities said started on September 5 in Yucaipa.
The fire began when a family used a smoke generating pyrotechnic device during a gender reveal party to celebrate the sex of their new baby.
In just two weeks, the fire spread to more than 19,000 acres across San Bernardino and Riverside counties, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection or CAL FIRE. On September 18, authorities announced that a firefighter died battling the blaze.
As for the post, it is important to note that the demonstrations against racism and police brutality varied in intensity, as there were peaceful marches organized by BLM leaders as well as some chaotic scenes of people stealing, breaking into businesses, and setting fires at night.
The truth
Because of the looting that happened during the height of the BLM protests, there were properties that were damaged.
Posts like the one that went viral on Facebook attempts to counter the claims of conservatives that BLM has damaged millions worth of properties by claiming that the wildfire that is started by a couple caused more damage.
It is important to note that the term property damage, according to Cornell Law School's law dictionary, is an "injury to real or personal property through another's negligence, willful destruction, or by an act of nature, such as damage to vehicles, fences, homes, or any other possession."
As of September 19, California firefighter is battling a total of 14 wildfires spanning more than 2.5 million acres, according to CAL FIRE.
The El Dorado wildfire was the fourth-smallest among the wildfires, and firefighters had contained roughly 66% of it through man-made barriers, roads, or bodies of water.
In total, California fires in 2020 damaged or destroyed 6,292 properties, including garages, barns, homes, businesses, and industrial buildings.
The El Dorado Fire, to which the claim referred, destroyed 16 structures on its own. The San Bernardino Sun reported that twelve people had been injured in the fire that has destroyed four homes and damaged two others.
As for the BLM protest, according to a Geographic Information Systems analyst in Tuscan, Arizona, almost 4,500 cities globally participated in the protest, and all U.S states were covered.
For days, peaceful marches during the day were followed by vandalism and destruction at night, and it caused millions of dollars in property damage in more than 1,500 locations.
According to The Star Tribune, the damaged properties included more than 260 restaurants, 200 stores, 80 grocery stores, 50 homes across the Twin Cities, as well as the Minneapolis Police Department's 3rd Precinct headquarters, which sustained heavy fire damage.
This means that the number of properties damaged in connection to Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis alone was almost 100 times greater than that destroyed by the El Dorado fire caused by a gender reveal party.
