Clips show Universal Studios Hollywood, not Tropical Storm Hilary damage

This article is more than one year old.
Published on August 23, 2023 at 22:32
3 min read
By AFP USA

Social media posts claim footage of water inundating a metro station was taken in Los Angeles after Tropical Storm Hilary hit the US state of California in August 2023. This is false; the video shows an attraction at the amusement park Universal Studios Hollywood.

"#BREAKING: The LA metro system is #flooding #HurricaneHillary #LosAngeles | #California," says an August 20, 2023 post on Twitter, which is being rebranded as "X," sharing video of water gushing into what appears to be a rail station.

Screenshot taken August 22, 2023 of a post on Twitter, which is being rebranded as "X"

The clip spread across platforms as Tropical Storm Hilary soaked Southern California with record rainfall, triggering landslides and flooding and shuttering schools, roads and businesses.

While the pictures shared online were taken in California, they do not depict damage caused by the August 2023 storm.

A reverse image search surfaced an identical scene from a Universal Studios Hollywood tour. Several clips of the attraction, which simulates a big earthquake, were taken before Tropical Storm Hilary (archived here and here).

Before being shared out of context online, the footage appears to have first circulated in jest.

The X user who originally published the video August 20 said in several subsequent posts that it was intended as a joke (archived here and here).

I posted Earthquake part of the Universal Studios Hollywood tour saying that an LA Metro station was flooding and a journalist actually believed it pic.twitter.com/9UAEDdC2RZ
— Mexican Rug Dealer (@DealinRugs) August 20, 2023

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority confirmed in an August 20 X post that the video depicts "a ride at Universal Studios" (archived here).

This is a ride at Universal Studios. Duh. https://t.co/rDvbwVMxtJ
— Metro Los Angeles (@metrolosangeles) August 20, 2023

Metro said in a post the next day that Tropical Storm Hilary, which at its peak registered as a Category 4 hurricane before crossing into the United States, caused "no significant damage across the Metro system" (archived here).

Plane crash, shark clips

The earthquake attraction video is not the only Universal Studios footage shared online following Tropical Storm Hilary.

"BREAKING: A plane has just crash landed in Long Beach, CA as a result of hurricane Hilary yall stay safe out there," says the caption of an August 21 Facebook reel from a user based in Santa Barbara, California.

Screenshot of a Facebook reel taken August 22, 2023

The same scene is featured on Universal Studios' tour, as evidenced by blog posts and YouTube videos (archived here and here). It shows the set of the 2005 movie "War of the Worlds."

An X user similarly joked that a "great white shark" was seen "swimming by a flooded gas station in LA," sharing a clip of a mechanical shark from the movie "Jaws" (archived here).

Screenshot of an X post taken August 23, 2023

NBC Universal confirmed to AFP the scenes show amusement park attractions.

AFP has fact-checked other claims about Tropical Storm Hilary here and here.

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