Clip shows blaze at firecracker store in India before Diwali, not in Philippines before New Year

The Philippines’ health department warned there had been an increase in fireworks-related injuries during the end-of-year holiday period, but a video of people rushing to escape a fire at a firecracker shop was not filmed at a market in the country’s capital, as social media posts claimed. The clip in fact shows a fire at a store in Hyderabad in India, days before the Hindu festival of Diwali in October 2024.

The video, showing a crush of people in front of what appears to be a fireworks store on fire, was shared on Facebook on December 30, 2024.

“New Year’s Day arrived early at Quiapo public market,” reads its Tagalog-language text overlay, referring to a market in the old district of the Philippine capital Manila (archived link).

Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on January 2, 2025

The clip was also shared elsewhere on Facebook here and here.

It circulated on the same day that the Philippine Department of Health released an advisory about the dangers of fireworks and how to treat fireworks-related injuries ahead of the New Year holiday (archived link).

An attached graphic showed they had recorded 163 fireworks-related injuries between December 22 and December 30 — a jump of 44 percent from the previous year’s tally.

Before the New Year, the Philippines’ fire protection agency also warned about the dangers of buying illegal firecrackers and conducted inspections of shops and their storage facilities (archived link).

The video circulating online, however, does not show a fire at a fireworks shop in Manila, and was not filmed ahead of the New Year break.

Hyderabad fire

A keyword search for “Paras Fireworks” — which is written on the awning of the shop in the falsely shared video — led to the same clip embedded in news reports from the Hindustan Times and India TV about a fire in a popular market in Hyderabad, India (archived here and here).

According to the reports, the fire broke out four days before Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, on the evening of October 27.

The police said the shop operated without a licence (archived link).

A longer version of the clip was shared by the Press Trust of India (PTI) on October 28 (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the clip posted by the PTI (right):

The longer PTI clip shows the shops adjacent to the firecracker stall, and matches Google Street View imagery of the area in Hyderabad (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the shops as seen in the PTI clip (left) and on Google Street View (right):

As of January 6, 2025, there have been no official reports of a fire at a Quiapo market firecracker shop at the end of December.

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