Viral Highway Image Is Unrelated to Hurricane Ida

1st September 2021

Viral Highway Image Is Unrelated to Hurricane Ida

The photo shows holiday traffic in Los Angeles in 2017 (Getty Images).

The Claim

An image of a blocked highway is the I-10 in Louisiana, with the occupants of the cars attempting to flee Hurricane Ida.

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Emerging story

As Hurricane Ida approached the Gulf Coast of the U.S., many residents of Louisiana decided to evacuate. This led to a significant amount of congestion on the I-10 highway. On social media, an image that many claimed to be the gridlocked highway soon began circulating.

Posts sharing this image have gained significant attention. One now-deleted Twitter post which has since been shared as a screenshot managed to get hundreds of interactions within a short timeframe.

A supporting image within the article body

Misbar’s Analysis

Misbar’s investigation found that this image is from 2017 and shows the I-405 highway in California. This image was published in the Los Angeles Times in 2019, but the caption underneath stated that it dates to 2017 and is of the I-405. The reason for this gridlock also has nothing to do with extreme weather events. Instead, it occurred due to people traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday.

There is plenty of photographic evidence of the congested I-10 highway in the run-up to the landfall of hurricane Ida. Potentially, the 2017 image was used as this shows congestion in both directions, while many of the genuine images show congestion in one direction only.