Old photo shows impact of Typhoon Soudelor in Taiwan, not Typhoon Gaemi

"Taipei City's Renai Road has become a jungle," read the traditional Chinese caption of a photo shared on Taiwanese forum PTT on July 25, 2024.

The photo shows a bus making its way along a tree-lined road that has been covered in fallen leaves and branches.

Yellow text overlaid on the photo reads: "Not a jungle, it's Renai Road in Taipei City."

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Screenshot of the false PTT post, captured on August 1, 2024

The same photo was shared with similar claims on X here, Facebook here and here, and Threads here.

The social media posts surfaced after Typhoon Gaemi made landfall in Taiwan with sustained wind speeds of 190 kilometres (118 miles) per hour at its peak (archived link).

The typhoon -- the strongest to hit the island in eight years -- killed at least five people and as many as 500 were reported injured.

Taiwan's defence ministry also announced that annual war games, in which some drills had already been cancelled due to the weather, had ended a day early and troops were sent to help local governments with disaster rescue work instead.

The photo circulating online, however, is old and shows the aftermath of a different typhoon.

Typhoon Soudelor

A keyword search on Google led to a statement published by the Taipei government on July 25 dismissing the claim and asking the public to stop spreading rumours (archived here).

It said the photo is "an old photo of the disaster caused by Typhoon Soudelor in 2015 and is not the actual situation of Renai Road after Typhoon  Gaemi".

"As of 7 am today, when the staff inspected the street trees, no situation as shown in the picture was found on Renai Road," it added.

The statement also included two photos of Renai Road taken on the morning of July 25 showing the road was clear.

A subsequent reverse image search on Google led to a report posted by Taiwan's China Times newspaper on August 10, 2015 that included the falsely shared photo (archived link).

The photo's caption read in part, "More than 6,000 trees felled in Taipei City caused by Typhoon Soudelor."

Below is a screenshot comparison between the photo used in the false post (left) and the same photo published in the China Times report (right): 

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Screenshot comparison between the photo used in the false post (left) and the same photo published in the China Times report (right)

The same photo was also used in a report about the storm's impact by SET News on August 10, 2015 (archived link).

AFP reported that Typhoon Soudelor caused at least eight deaths in Taiwan in 2015 as it flooded rivers, ripped up trees, and triggered landslides (archived link).

Toppled trees and signboards damaged electricity lines, knocking out power to a record 4.3 million households.

AFP has debunked claims about Typhoon Gaemi here and here.