This video actually shows a March 2020 fire in Singapore

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 24, 2020 at 05:30
2 min read
By AFP Singapore

A video has been viewed thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook alongside claims it shows a fire at a public housing apartment in the Singaporean town of Clementi in June 2020. The claim is false; the video actually shows a fire that occurred in March 2020.

The video was published here on Facebook on June 17, 2020. It has been viewed more than 2,400 times.

The one minute 28-second video shows black smoke billowing from an apartment building.

Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post taken on June 23, 2020

The post’s caption states: “Fire at Clementi West (Last Friday)”.

The video was also shared here on Facebook alongside a similar claim. Other posts, such as this, this, this and this, claim the video shows a fire in Ang Mo Kio, a town in northeastern Singapore.

The video, however, has been shared in a misleading context.

A reverse Google Image search with keyframes extracted from the video in the misleading posts found an identical video published here on Facebook on March 16, 2020.

The video description reads: “Today... Clementi west Street 2 block 724.”

Below is a screenshot comparison of a keyframe from the video in the misleading post (L) and the Facebook video (R):

Screenshot comparison of a keyframe from the video in the misleading post (L) and the Facebook video (R)

A further keyword search found that Singaporean news channel Channel News Asia published similar footage of the March 16 fire here on YouTube.

The video description states: “Around 40 people had to be evacuated temporarily from their homes on the afternoon of Mar 16, after a fire broke out in a flat in Clementi.”

The fire was also reported by Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times here.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), the city-state's emergency services organisation, also told AFP the fire occurred in March 2020.

“On 16 March 2020, at about 3.20pm, SCDF was alerted to a fire in a 19th floor unit at Block 724 Clementi West Street 2. The fire, which involved the contents of the living room of the unit was extinguished by SCDF firefighters using one water jet," an agency spokesperson said in an email on June 19.

The spokesperson added that "approximately 40 persons from the affected block were evacuated by SCDF and Police as a precautionary measure."

The street where the fire occurred can be seen here on Google Street View.

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