Ottawa residents keeping tabs on wildfire coverage this year have a lot to follow, and not all of what shows up in their feeds is real. As fires continue to burn across the country, a wave of fake photos and false claims has been spreading online right alongside the legitimate reporting.
The Scale of the 2026 Season
Canada has recorded 4,793 fires burning a combined 4.1 million hectares so far in the 2026 wildfire season. That is a significant season by any measure, though it is worth putting in context: by mid-August of the prior year, the country had already logged 4,584 fires and 7.7 million hectares burned, meaning last year's season scorched nearly twice the area despite a similar number of individual fires. Numbers like these show how much variation there can be from year to year, and why it matters to get the figures right rather than relying on whatever claim happens to be trending.
Fake Photos Making the Rounds
CTV News recently warned that false images claiming to show wildfire damage in British Columbia have been circulating on social media, images that do not actually depict the fires being reported on. This is not a new problem during major wildfire seasons. During the California wildfires, fake images circulated claiming the Hollywood sign had burned down. It never did. Reports confirmed the sign survived those fires entirely intact, but the false images still spread widely before that could be clarified.
Why It Spreads So Easily
Misinformation around wildfires spreads through social media, YouTube, and other online platforms largely because of how easy it has become to share information, true or not, with a wide audience in seconds. A dramatic photo or video can rack up shares long before anyone checks whether it is actually connected to the event being discussed, and by the time a correction surfaces, the false version has often already reached far more people than the truth ever will.
The Ottawa Angle
For Ottawa residents following wildfire news out of British Columbia, California, or elsewhere in the country, this matters because a misleading photo can distort the picture of how serious or widespread a fire actually is. Whether someone is trying to understand how this year's season compares to last year's, or just scrolling through wildfire coverage on their phone, a fake image undermines the ability to get an accurate read on a story that, given how active recent wildfire seasons have been, is likely to keep coming up.
What to Do Before Sharing
The simplest safeguard is to pause before sharing a dramatic wildfire photo and check whether it is tied to a verified, credible source. Cross-referencing an image or claim against established outlets, rather than taking a viral post at face value, is a straightforward way to avoid helping false information travel further during a wildfire season that is already generating plenty of real news to follow.
Sources: Ottawa Life Magazine, Public Safety Canada
