Cars Melting Due To High Temperature In Kuwait? A FactCheck

Unrelated images of car bumpers and traffic signal lights 'melting' are being shared with a misleading claim that they are from Kuwait, with the objects melting due to extremely high temperatures in the country.

BOOM found that while one image is from cars melting from a fire at a construction site in Ariazon and the other one is from a traffic signal that caught fire in Kuwait after a road accident.

The images are accompanied with the caption, "Kuwait on Saturday recorded the highest temperatures in the world; reaching upto 63 degrees Celsius under direct sunlight, according to Al Qabas newspaper."

We searched for the caption on Facebook and found same images shared along with the caption.

Click here to view the post and here for an archive.

FACT-CHECK

Caption picked up from a news article

A Google search for the caption led us to a Gulf News article dated June 12, 2019, about Kuwait and Saudi Arabia recording highest temperature on earth due to the heatwave.

'Melted' cars image

BOOM ran a reverse image search using the Russian search engine Yandex which led us to a news report in Tuskon News Now.

According to the report, in the aftermath of a construction site fire that occurred in Tucson, Arizona on June 19th, 2018, around a dozen cars parked nearby were damaged.

The cars bumpers in the image melted due to the fire and not due to the extreme high temperatures as in claimed in the viral post.

Traffic Signal Image

The image of the traffic light is indeed from Kuwait, but it did not melt due to the weather.

According to an article by fact-checking website Snopes dated August 2017, the traffic light melted after an accident where a car hit the traffic signal and caught fire in 2013.

This YouTube video dated back to July 2013 shows the street light that melted due to the car accident.