Old clips falsely depicted as Russia quake
- Published on August 21, 2025 at 11:36
- 6 min read
- By Harshana SILVA, Alysha BIBI, AFP Sri Lanka
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"Tsunami warnings are being issued across the Pacific following a massive 8.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia," reads a Sinhala-language Facebook post on July 30, 2025.
It shares a video with multiple clips showing a jeep on a shaking road, massive waves crashing onto land, severe flooding and houses and vehicles swept away by torrents of water.
"Magnitude of the tsunami which struck Russia," says text overlaid to the video, describing the strength of the quake at 7.4 magnitude.
Similar claims surfaced elsewhere on Facebook after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Russia's Kamchatka region (archived link).
The tremor, one of the strongest ever recorded, prompted tsunami alerts and evacuations across parts of the Pacific from Japan to the United States to Ecuador (archived link).
Russian state television aired footage of a tsunami wave sweeping through Severo-Kurilsk, a coastal town on an island close to Japan, carrying buildings and debris into the sea.
But reverse image, keyword searches and geolocation found the clips in the circulating compilation are unrelated to the recent quake.
Japan footage
The clip of a jeep jolting sideways was uploaded online in 2024 following a strong quake in Japan on New Year's day that killed more than 100 people (archived here and here).
The vehicle bears a license plate that corresponds to Japan's vehicle registration format (archived here and here).
AFP also previously fact-checked the same clip here.
Another clip showing houses and vehicles being washed away earlier appeared in old BBC News and Channel 4 reports about the powerful earthquake that struck Japan's northeast coast March 2011 (archived here and here).
Old storm
Reverse image search of the clip showing waves crashing onto the roof of a building led to a similar video published on YouTube on November 28, 2023 (archived link).
"Abkhazia ! Gagra Storm ! November 27, 2023. Storm in Abkhazia", says the caption in a mix of Russian and English.
AFP geolocated the video on Yandex and Google Maps to a cafe in the town of Gagra in Abkhazia, a separatist pro-Russian territory not recognised by the international community (archived here, here and here).
The video was shared after a storm hit Abkhazia on November 27, 2023 (archived link).
The video of waves sweeping away a car also dates back to posts from November 2023, including from weather platforms AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which identified the location as Tirebolu in Turkey (archived here and here).
Street lamps visible in the video correspond to those seen on the Google Maps Street View of a coastal road in the Turkish town (archived link).
Further reverse image search of the clip of heavy waves filmed from a balcony led to a similar TikTok video that previously appeared on November 28, 2023 (archived link).
The video's caption contains hashtags that pertain to a storm and various parts of Georgia, including the western city of Kobuleti.
Street poles and benches seen in the clip correspond to those seen on Google Maps Street View of the city's coast (archived link).
AI made
The final two clips in the compilation show signs they are AI-generated.
One showing a massive wave approaching land and crashing into a building was uploaded to a YouTube channel where the caption includes the hashtags "AIshorts" and "SoraAI" -- the name of a video generation tool from OpenAI (archived here and here).
In the second clip, which depicts vehicles swept away by severe flooding, the cars appear unrealistically small and overlap and merge into each other.
A similar clip was shared on TikTok which includes the ChatGPT logo in the bottom right corner (archived link).
AFP has debunked other misused visuals linked to the July 2025 earthquake in Russia here and here.
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