Video has circulated in reports since 2019 about Italian volcano eruption — not Tonga eruption

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on January 18, 2022 at 10:46
  • 2 min read
  • By AFP Hong Kong
A video has been shared repeatedly on Twitter, Douyin and Weibo alongside a claim it shows the moment an underwater volcano erupted in the Pacific Ocean, triggering a tsunami that hit the Pacific island nation of Tonga in January 2022. This is false: the video has circulated online since 2019 in reports about a volcanic eruption in Italy.

The video was posted on Twitter here on January 17, 2022.

The caption reads: "Tonga undersea volcanic eruption".

The eight-second clip shows an empty rubber boat being dragged along an expanse of open water as a huge cloud of smoke approaches. 

Image
Screenshot taken on January 18, 2022, of the misleading Twitter post

The superimposed simplified Chinese-language text at the top of the video translates as: "Netizen filmed the real scene of underwater volcanic eruption in Tonga / The tsunami came quickly."

The superimposed text in the bottom part of the video reads: "On January 15, Tonga -- an island country in the South Pacific -- saw a volcanic eruption again. Tonga, New Zealand and other countries issued tsunami warnings.

"Tsunami waves were detected in China's coastal areas on January 16, but the intensity was not strong. Due to serious interference in Tonga's communication, there has been no report of casualties and property losses so far."

A massive underwater volcanic eruption in Tonga on January 15, 2021, triggered tsunami waves around the Pacific and reportedly caused significant damage to the island nation's capital, AFP reported here

The video was shared with a similar claim here on Twitter; here on Weibo; and here and here on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. The posts received more than 56,000 likes.

However, the video has been shared in a false context.

A reverse image search on Yandex using keyframes from the video, followed by a Google keyword search, found this corresponding footage.

It was published on the YouTube channel for news agency Storyful on August 29, 2019. 

The video is titled: "Boaters Get Close Look at Stromboli Island's Volcano Eruption."

Stromboli volcano is located on the Italian island of Stromboli.

The video in the misleading posts is a mirrored version of the original footage. It starts from the one-minute eight-second mark of the YouTube video.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the misleading post (L) and the original video uploaded by Storyful (R):

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Screenshot comparison of the video shared in the misleading post (L) and the genuine video from Storyful (R)

The same video was also published in August 2019 by US television network ABC News here and British tabloid The Sun here.

AFP reported on the Stromboli volcanic eruption in late August 2019 here.

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