Old, Unrelated Videos Shared As Visuals Of Pakistan Floods Aftermath

Authors

Vasudha Beri

Vasudha noticed the growing problem of mis/disinformation online after studying New Media at ACJ in Chennai and became interested in separating facts from fiction. She is interested in learning how global issues affect individuals on a micro level. Before joining Newschecker’s English team, she was working with Latestly.

With massive floods continuing to wreak havoc in Pakistan, social media platforms are swamped with visuals showing the dire situation in the country. In this context, an image of a train partially submerged in muddy water is going viral claiming to show disruption of railway services in Balochistan amid unprecedented flooding. 

Major news outlet, Zee News featured the image in a report titled, ‘Pakistan floods: Railway services disrupted in Balochistan for 10 days, train ops reaches dead end,’ only to replace it with a representational image later. However, an archive of the same can be seen here.

Social media users and websites, including Green Web Monster and Today News Network, also shared the same image.

Another video of vehicles being washed away by water is going viral claiming to show the visuals from Pakistan’s Karachi amid massive flooding.

Furthermore, a video showing a man rescuing two children from gushing water flow is also being linked to Pakistan floods. A tweet by user @raja_tayyab01 has been retweeted over 360 times and viewed around 54.5k times. Notably, the same tweet was also used by news outlets ABP Live and News18 in their respective reports on Pakistan floods.

Pakistan battles flood fury 

Unprecedented flooding in Pakistan has resulted in huge damage to people and property, with lives in several areas coming to a standstill. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) on Monday reported the deaths, pushing the total fatalities in the devastating floods since June to 1,314, nearly a third of them (458) being children. Sindh province is known to have been the worst affected where authorities have reported a total of 522 deaths so far, including 219 children.

Also Read: Video Claiming To Show Dire Situation In Pakistan Due To Floods Is Actually From India

Fact Check/Verification

Newschecker decided to investigate each claim one by one.

Claim 1

A simple reverse image search on the photograph of a half submerged train on Google led us to multiple news articles from May 2022, on Assam floods. One such report by Business Today, featuring the viral image, stated how the “Haflong station in the Dima Hasao district of Assam has been completely inundated due to heavy rains and mudslide.”

We further looked up “Haflong station Assam flood” on Google and found a report by Mint, dated May 19, 2022, titled “Assam floods: Indian Railways cancels these trains till end of next month. Full list.” The report carried a different version of the viral photograph with the caption, “Train coaches are seen toppled over following mudslides triggered by heavy rains at New Haflong railway station on the Lumding-Silchar route at Dima Hasao district, in northeastern Assam state.” It was credited to AP.

ANI shared a 54-second-video showing the “aftermath of incessant rainfall and flood at New Haflong railway station in Dima Hasao district of Assam,” in a tweet dated May 19, 2022. A quick comparison of the visuals from the video and the viral image, led us to conclude that the photograph is actually from Haflong railway station.

The viral photograph showing a train semi-submerged in water is actually from Assam, and not Pakistan as is being claimed.

Claim 2

We conducted Google reverse image search on the keyframes of the viral video, which led us to a report by a Japanese website, Rocket News 24, dated March 14, 2013. Displaying a still from the viral clip, the report elaborated on how a YouTube video showing scenes of 2011 tsunami in Japan “has become a hot topic among users in Arab countries.”

The article also carried the said YouTube video titled ‘Ishinomaki City Tsunami Japan 3.11/2011,’ uploaded by user takuro suzuki on December 18, 2011.  On inspecting the video, we could conclude that it was a longer version of the viral clip.

The description of the footage roughly translates to, “The Great East Japan Earthquake This is a video of Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture. There is nothing I can do if I get caught in a tsunami like this. Taken from the rooftop of Ishinomaki Gas. Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture.”

Taking a cue, we looked up the Google Street view of “Ishinomaki Gas,” “Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture,” “Ishinomaki Miyagi” multiple times and found visuals similar to that seen in the longer version of the viral video.

We further noticed that the man making the video actually moves his device in a clockwise direction and the visuals seen above appear on the screen. Hence, we rotated the street view to find another location visibly similar to the one seen in the viral video.

We could thus conclude that a video from 2011 Japan tsunami is being shared with the false claim to show visuals from Pakistan’s Karachi

Claim 3

To verify the veracity of the claim, Newschecker undertook a Google reverse image search by using the keyframes of the viral video. This led us to a report by Times Of Oman, dated June 25, 2022 titled ‘Man risks life to save two children stuck in a wadi in Oman.’ Featuring a screengrab from the viral video, the report stated that a citizen from Al Dakhiliyah Governorate risked his life to save two children from a flash flood in Wadi Bahla.

Furthermore, we came across a tweet by Kuwait based news outlet @ImeGrop, dated June 25, 2022. The post carried the viral video with the caption, “A heroic scene of an Omani youth saving two children from certain death.”

Several media outlets had reported on the incident. You can read the same here, here and here. 

Notably, the same video had gone viral with a different claim earlier this year. Newschecker had debunked the same on July 2, 2022.

We can thus conclude that a video of a photographer rescuing two boys in Oman has been falsely shared to show the situation in flood-hit Pakistan. 

Conclusion

Viral posts claiming to show visuals of Pakistan floods aftermath are false. The videos and image are old and unrelated to the recent flooding in the country.

Result: False

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Authors

Vasudha Beri

Vasudha noticed the growing problem of mis/disinformation online after studying New Media at ACJ in Chennai and became interested in separating facts from fiction. She is interested in learning how global issues affect individuals on a micro level. Before joining Newschecker’s English team, she was working with Latestly.