Video shows flooding in Brazil, not aftermath of deadly Philippine storm

Published on October 29, 2024 at 06:18
3 min read
By Lucille SODIPE, AFP Philippines

Tropical Storm Trami submerged swathes of the northern Philippines and killed at least 125 when it rammed the archipelago in October, but a video of a flooded city with hundreds of thousands of views does not show the hardest-hit Bicol region as social media posts falsely claimed. The circulating footage was filmed in southern Brazil in May.

"Situation in Bicol today," reads overlaid Tagalog-language text on a Facebook video shared on October 24, 2024.

The video, which was viewed more than 560,000 times, shows aerial footage of houses and buildings inundated by floodwaters.

"Rise up Bicol! What severe devastation Typhoon Kristine left," read part of its Tagalog-language caption, using the local name for Tropical Storm Trami (archived link).

"Let's pray for the well-being of the residents of Bicol Region," it added.

Screenshot of the false Facebook post, taken on October 25, 2024

Nearly a million people sheltered at evacuation centres or with relatives after losing their homes or being driven out by floodwaters as Trami rammed into the Philippines on October 24 (archived link).

According to a tally from the Philippines' disaster agency, the storm -- the deadliest to hit the Southeast Asian country this year -- killed at least 125 people.

In the hardest-hit Bicol region, residents were trapped for days on the roofs and upper floors of their homes awaiting desperately needed assistance (archived link).

The video clip was also shared alongside similar claims on TikTok here, here and here.

But it was in fact captured in southern Brazil in May.

A reverse image search of a keyframe in the video found the same footage published on TikTok on May 6, 2024 by a user named Uesley Moreira (archived link).

The location of the post was tagged "Porto Alegre", the capital city of Brazil's southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul (archived link).

Historic flooding -- which experts attributed to climate change exacerbated by El Nino -- killed at least 170 people and displaced more than 600,000 in the state (archived link).

Other aerial clips of the flooding on Moreira's TikTok page were previously falsely linked to severe flooding in northern Myanmar, which AFP debunked in July 2024.

"I travelled to Rio Grande do Sul, which is where the video was recorded sometime in May 2024," Moreira told AFP at the time.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the Moreira's footage (right):

Screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the Moreira's footage (right)

The large structure seen in the footage corresponds to Google Street View imagery of the Arena do Gremio, the stadium of Brazilian football team Gremio (archived link).

A photo of the stadium during the flooding is also available in AFP's archives.

AFP has previously debunked misinformation circulating after storms in the Philippines here and here.

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