Old video from S.Africa falsely linked to Russia mega-quake

Published on July 31, 2025 at 11:21
2 min read
By Harshana SILVA, AFP Sri Lanka

One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck Russia's sparsely populated Far East on July 30, 2025, prompting tsunami warnings across various nations across the Pacific rim. But an online video supposedly depicting a powerful storm surge was in fact filmed in South Africa's Durban city several years prior.

"A powerful tsunami hits Russia, sea waves over 13 feet high enter Russia," reads a Sinhala-language Facebook post shared hours after the 8.8 magnitude jolt struck off the coast of Russia's Kamchatka peninsula (archived link).

The tremor was the region's strongest since 1952, the regional seismic monitoring service said.

Storm surges of up to four metres (12 feet) were predicted for some parts of the Pacific with more than a dozen nations -- from Japan to the United States to Ecuador -- evacuating citizens from coastal regions.

The warnings were later lifted, allowing millions of temporary evacuees to return home.

The only reported fatality was a woman killed when her car fell off a cliff in Japan as she tried to escape, local media reported.

The post featured a video of waves crashing onto the shore as people flee from the beach.

Screenshot of the Facebook post taken on July 31, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

Similar posts were also shared by users from India, Pakistan, and the Philippines but the footage does not show a tsunami hitting Russia.

A reverse image search on Google surfaced multiple YouTube posts sharing the clip in March 2017 (archived here and here). The posts say it shows a beach in the coastal city of Durban.

Screenshot comparison of the false post (left) and the original video

Local media outlets eNCA and Southlands Sun reported that the beaches were closed due to the high tides at the time (archived here and here).

Using details from the news reports, AFP was able to confirm the location of the video by comparing it with Google Maps street imagery of a beach in Durban.

Screenshot shows the falsely shared video (left) and matching view on Google Maps, with similarities highlighted in red by AFP

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