Old sinkhole video resurfaces as northern Malaysian state braces for monsoon
- Published on November 17, 2025 at 05:25
- 2 min read
- By Raevathi SUPRAMANIAM, AFP Malaysia
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After the northern Malaysian state of Penang was hit with above-average rainfall that led to several landslides, an old video showing a sinkhole has circulated on social media with a false claim it was filmed in November 2025. The residents association in Tanjung Bungah -- where the clip was shot -- told AFP the sinkhole had been filled in and no landslides were recently reported in the depicted neighbourhood.
"Landslide in Tanjung Bungah, Beverly Hills - Penang. 7 November 2025," reads a Malay-language Facebook post from November 7, 2025. Text overlaid on the video makes the same claim.
The post features a video showing a sinkhole in front of a newly built row of houses filled with muddy water. A man speaking in the local Hokkien dialect can be heard saying: "What a headache. The situation is so bad now."
The Penang Fire and Rescue Department said it was stepping up monitoring of landslide hotspots in the state ahead of the monsoon season, which was expected to begin mid-November and would bring strong wind and continuous downpours (archived here and here).
Similar posts about the purported landslide also appeared on Threads, TikTok and Instagram.
Although Penang saw several landslides after heavy rain in late October, including in the northern coastal area of Tanjung Bungah, the circulating video was in fact filmed years ago (archived link).
A reverse image search on Google led to a Facebook post from November 5, 2017 that was captioned: "Landslide in Beverly Hills, Tanjung Bungah, Penang." (archived link)
The post includes a video showing the same sinkhole and housing development.
A Google keyword search also found a photo of the sinkhole in a report by online news outlet Free Malaysia Today on November 5, 2017 titled "After heavy rain, Tg Bungah sinkhole gives residents the jitters" (archived link).
The report said the sinkhole appeared after the road outside a newly built housing area collapsed.
A spokesperson for the Tanjung Bungah Residents Association told AFP that there was "no landslide recently, or since the initial disaster".
The spokesperson also shared several photos taken on September 25, 2025 showing the damage caused by the landslide and sinkhole has been repaired, adding that no one currently lives in the area.
AFP has also debunked posts falsely sharing an AI-generated clip of a landslide in Penang.
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