Old video falsely shared as '2023 Sri Lanka flooding'

The video was shared on Facebook on September 3, 2023 with a caption that reads: "OMG!! The train journey through Rambukkana today." The post has since been deleted.

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A screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on September 4, 2023

Rambukkana is a small town in Sri Lanka's southern province of Sabaragamuwa.

The footage circulated a few days after Sri Lanka experienced heavy rains in the capital Colombo and several other parts of the country in early September following months of drought.

It has also been shared elsewhere on Facebook here and here, and was passed around on WhatsApp.

Comments left under the false posts indicate social media users believed the clip was recent. One wrote: "Looks like the prayers have worked -- last week no rain, this week it's floods."

"Meanwhile, there has still been no rain in north-central provinces," another said.

Old flooding incident

A reverse image search of keyframes on Google led to this clip published on November 9, 2021 by popular Sri Lankan social media-based news outlet NEXTV. It is titled: "Train makes its way through the floods this morning" (archived link).

The video contains footage identical to the clip shared recently and was widely disseminated on Facebook that year, including in posts here and here (archived links here and here).

Below are screenshot comparisons of the video shared with the false claim (left) and the footage from 2021 (right):

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Video shared with the false claim (left) and footage from 2021 (right)

An editor with NEXTV told AFP the clip was shared to the news organisation in 2021.

"This video was filmed by a passenger on the train and shared with us via WhatsApp," the NEXTV editor said.

Rambukkana railway station master Sampath Menikpura separately told AFP the area was not recently flooded.

"This clip does not depict a situation that occurred in Rambukkana over the past few weeks," he said on September 4.