Are there credible reports about evacuation from 17 U.S. cities due to an imminent "mass event" approaching in April 2025? No, that's not true: As of April 7, 2025, neither federal nor local authorities issued evacuation orders for the metropolitan areas named on social media. The image from a viral post that listed 17 U.S. cities was published online for the first time in 2022 and since then has been shared by QAnon accounts without any credible proof.
The claim reappeared in a post (archived here) published on X on April 6, 2025. It opened:
Rumors are circulation that a mass event is about to happen across these major cities 👀.
The post shared an image that read:
Evacuate From These Cities:
1) New York City
2) Los Angeles
3) Chicago
4) Philadelphia
5) Washington DC
6) Houston
7) Nashville
8) New Orleans
9) Charlotte
10) San Francisco
11) Detroit
12) Seattle
13) Atlanta
14) Las Vegas
15) Baltimore
16) Boston
17) Miami
This is what the entry looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot by Lead Stories)
The "warning", however, was not new. It was first published online in September 2022 when the same picture was uploaded on Telegram. That post did not cite any credible sources, either.
In 2023, the image was reshared by an account republishing debunked QAnon-linked conspiratorial claims.
Had 17 American cities at once faced some imminent event posing significant risks to their residents, local and state authorities would have declared a state of emergency, issued evacuation orders, and the federal government could have stepped in. But a search across Google News for the names of the cities and keywords "evacuation" or "emergency" (archived here) did not produce any credible reports from 2025 that would have corroborated the claim. A similar search across government websites for keywords seen here did not show evacuation orders published in the first week of April 2025, either:
(Source: Google screenshot by Lead Stories)
On April 7, 2025, a spokesperson for the New York City's administration additionally confirmed to Lead Stories via email that, as of this writing, there was no evacuation in place.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks concerning current events are here.
