Visakhapatnam is a city in Andhra Pradesh known for being an industrial and economic hub. Also called Vizag, it is home to several major industrial plants, including steel and petrochemical industries. Incidents of fires at industrial plants are frequently reported in the media.
A major fire broke out at Bharat Petrochemicals Limited in September 2025, and another fire occurred at the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant in May 2025. Meanwhile, a video has gone viral on social media.
The video shows a massive fire on a hill, with what appears to be a small town below it.
Users have shared the video claiming it shows a recent massive fire at HPCL in Visakhapatnam, and similar information has been written on the video itself.
You can find the screenshot of the claim below.
Fact Check:
The claim is misleading. The viral video shows a fire at HPCL in Visakhapatnam that occurred in 2021. There is no information indicating that any such incident has taken place recently.
When we searched for the keyword “HPCL fire in Visakhapatnam” during our investigation, we did not find any recent news reports from credible media outlets about such an incident.
However, during the investigation, we found a news report that was aired on Kalinga TV on 25 May 2021. The report mentioned a terrible fire at the HPCL plant in Visakhapatnam.
We found that the photo in the news report closely matches the viral video.
For further investigation, we conducted a reverse image search on several frames from the viral video. The search revealed that ANI had posted about the incident on its social media accounts on 25 May 2021.
The viral video shows the same intensity of fire as seen in the news footage.
Our investigation also revealed that ETV had broadcast a news report on May 25, 2021.
While reporting, ETV stated: "Terrible fire in Andhra Pradesh. A fire has broken out at HPCL in Visakhapatnam. Employees are running out of the plant after witnessing the fire. The alarm was sounding at the time of the incident. The cause of the fire is not yet known," ETV mentioned in its broadcast.
India TV reported "A major fire broke out at the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) plant in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Several fire tenders were deployed to douse the flames, and the fire was soon brought under control."
India TV further reported that, according to HPCL, a fire had broken out in a crude oil processing unit at HPCL’s Visakha refinery. Security and firefighting measures were immediately activated. The fire was brought under control without any casualties, and there was no danger to the public. Other refinery operations continued to run normally.
On the other hand, the incident was also reported by major media outlets such as The Economic Times and NDTV.
This proves that the claim is misleading. The viral video shows the HPCL fire in Visakhapatnam that occurred in 2021. There are no reports of any such incident in the recent past.