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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Disasters & emergencies fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about disasters & emergencies. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

3,259 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYDisasters & emergencies

Satellite video showing the visuals of the recent earthquake in Indonesia

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The claim concerned a video presented as satellite visuals of the recent earthquake on Java, including a suggestion that it showed the land mass shifting during the quake. FACTLY’s investigation says the video instead shows the effects of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Indonesia on 28 September 2018. It identifies the footage as a time-lapse of soil liquefaction, not visuals of the recent event. To trace the imagery, the review describes reverse-image searches of video screenshots. It reports finding similar visuals in a CNN article, which identified satellite images comparing conditions before and after villages were wiped away in the 2018 disaster. The review also says it found social-media posts from 2018 describing the time-lapse as satellite imagery of soil liquefaction. The review’s account of the video’s provenance points to Sutopo Purwo Nugroho of Indonesia’s National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure (BNPB). It reports that he described the footage as showing soil liquefaction at the Petobo Housing Complex in Palu during the 28 September 2018 earthquake, and said it was made using WorldView satellite images. Thus, the footage is real satellite-derived imagery of an Indonesian earthquake, but it is from 2018 rather than the recent earthquake named in the claim.

dpaDisasters & emergencies

Cette photo montre un accident de la route à Leuze, en Belgique.

Publisher’s rating: Il s’agit de « phishing », autrement appelé hameçonnage. Le but de telles publications est de soutirer de l’argent ou d’importantes informations aux utilisateurs. L’accident photographié a en fait eu lieu en 2019 en France.

The post described in the review claimed that a crash killing two young people had happened in Leuze, Belgium. It included a link said to help people check the victims’ identities. The investigation found that the post paired that claim with an old photograph: the pictured crash was in Saint-Julien-Puy-Lavèze, in France’s Puy-de-Dôme, and dated to 2019. The review reports that this accident killed one person, an 18-year-old man—not two young people in Belgium. The review describes two checks. A reverse-image search led to a local newspaper article about the French crash, providing a location and date for the image. Separately, the link in the Facebook post led to an external page that Chrome flagged as suspicious; following it displayed a phishing warning. Together, the image’s documented history and the suspicious link undermine the post’s presentation of the photograph as a current Belgian accident and support the review’s conclusion that the post was designed to obtain users’ information or money.

dpaDisasters & emergencies

Ce terrible accident avec sept morts vient d'avoir lieu à Banneux, près de Liège.

Publisher’s rating: Cet accident n'a pas eu lieu à Banneux. Il n'y a même pas d'autoroute dans le village. La photo a été prise il y a plus de cinq ans en France.

The claim described a recent “horrible accident” in Banneux, near Liège, saying seven people aged 14 to 23 had died and an eighth was critically injured. The review checked both whether the pictured scene could be in Banneux and where the image had actually come from. Its location check found that Banneux is on the N666, a two-lane national road, and has no motorway. The nearest motorway, the A26 at Sprimont, is more than five kilometres away; the review also says that road is narrower than the one shown in the image. These details conflict with the post’s depiction of a motorway crash in Banneux. To establish the image’s provenance, the review reports using reverse-image search and finding an identical image on French broadcaster France 3’s website. It identifies the scene as an accident near Beaune, France, on 5 July 2017, and says the accompanying article reported two deaths. The image therefore does not document the claimed recent Banneux accident, and the post’s seven-death figure is not supported by the event associated with the photograph.

FACTLYDisasters & emergencies

Video of ‘Aaj Tak’ reporting a horrific accident near UP’s Deoria which killed 6 rats

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The viral post presents an Aaj Tak report as showing a road accident near Deoria in Uttar Pradesh in which six rats were killed. FACTLY’s review says the post altered the visuals: the original report concerned a crash that killed six people, not six rats. To check the video’s provenance, the review reports finding an Aaj Tak YouTube upload dated 19 April 2016, titled “Six killed in road accident in UP.” It says that footage shows injured people and a damaged car. The review also describes the video’s account of the crash: a Maruti car lost control and hit a roadside gathering in Devariya (Deoria), killing six people and seriously injuring 12 others. The key comparison is between the original accident footage and the viral version. According to the review, the viral video replaces images of injured people with an image of dead rats scattered around a toy car. Thus, while the underlying report is about a fatal accident in Deoria, the rats are not what the original Aaj Tak footage depicts.