Tonga tsunami

This video shows large waves hitting a building in the Canary Islands, not Tonga

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on January 25, 2022 at 04:54
  • Updated on January 25, 2022 at 05:07
  • 2 min read
  • By AFP Thailand

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After a powerful undersea volcano eruption near Tonga triggered a tsunami across the Pacific, Facebook posts shared a video they claimed showed huge waves hitting the island nation. The claim is false; the footage shows waves crashing against an apartment building in the Canary Islands and has circulated online since November 2018.

"Tsunami from the volcanic explosion in Tonga," reads a Thai-language Facebook post shared on January 17, 2022.

The footage, viewed more than 880,000 times, shows waves crashing against an apartment building, ripping off balconies.

Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post, taken on January 18, 2022

An undersea eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano in Tonga on January 15 triggered a Pacific-wide tsunami that destroyed homes and caused widespread flooding.

The same video was shared in similar Facebook posts here and here.

However, the posts are misleading.

A reverse image search followed by a keyword search on Google found the clip featured in a longer YouTube video posted on November 19, 2018 by British newspaper The Guardian.

The video is titled: "Giant waves in Tenerife destroy seafront balconies".

The same video featured in a report on the website of UK tabloid The Daily Mirror headlined: "Huge waves in Tenerife destroy third-floor hotel balcony as storms batter Canary Islands."

"Huge waves destroyed seafront apartment balconies at a popular tourist town, prompting a number of evacuations. Footage shows waves reaching the third-floor of a block of flats in Mesa del Mar in the north-west of Tenerife," it reported.

A reverse image search found the video posted on Twitter on November 18, 2018 by Nelson J. Acosta, a photographer based in the Canary Islands.

The Spanish-language tweet reads: "Waves ripping up railings on balconies in Marisol de Mesa del Mar, Tenerife #FMACANARIAS".

The building in the video corresponds with apartments shown on Google Maps.

AFP has fact-checked various false claims about the Tonga volcano.

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