A viral video of cars being washed away by a huge wave of water is being shared as the recent floods in China.
Unusually heavy rainfall in China caused a series of devastating floods in the central and southwestern regions. Experts fear that the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river is near capacity and could burst, causing further damage.
However, the video is actually from the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011.
CLAIM
Several users shared the viral video of recent flooding in China.
The video shared via a Facebook page, Hingminashi Eikhoi, had gained more than 15,700 perspectives at the time of writing.
One user shared the video on Twitter, getting more than 28,200 views.
Users shared the video with the claim,
“चीन ने वायरस भेजकर दुनिया को धोखा दिया अब ऊपर वाला उसे धोखा दे रहा है”
(Translation: “China betrayed the world by spreading the virus, now God is betraying it.”)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
The video is about the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, causing great destruction.
An opposite symbol, the search for key symbols in the video led us to a Facebook page, “dadarprabhadevi.in”, which had released the video in 2016 with the legend “Horrible Japan Tsunami Flood Video”.
The video has gained over 1.2 million perspectives and 3,000 likes since then.
A search for “Tsunami of Japan” on YouTube led us to a video titled “Tsunami of Japan 2011: Ishinomaki [stabilized with Deshaker]” through the user, “John9612”.
The user had also connected the original source of the video to the user, “Takuro Suzuki”, who had uploaded the video on December 18, 2011, under the name “Ishinomaki Tsunami Tsunami Japan 3.11 / 2011”.
Another search for keywords with the location of the flood took us to the Japanese news site, YouTube channel FNN, FNN311, committed to the tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011.
According to the video description, he pierced Koichi Abe from Ishinomaki Gas Inc. from the roof of his office.
We also discovered the precise location on Google Maps. The 3 blue fuel towers shown in the video can also be seen in satellite photographs of the location.
Clearly, a video of the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of the Thoku region is falsely shared as flooding in China.
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