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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.

3,262 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYDisasters & emergencies

Vehicles getting washed away at Osmangunj in Hyderabad on 13 October 2020

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a video said to show vehicles being washed away at Osmangunj in Hyderabad during the heavy rains of 13 October 2020. FACTLY’s investigation found that the same video had circulated online before those rains, so it could not depict the claimed event. Its review notes that the video had been shared online “at least since 25 September 2019” and says it had also been posted by multiple users in 2019 with a similar claim. FACTLY reports finding the same video in a September 2019 post by News18 – Telugu. This earlier circulation is the key evidence against the video being footage of the October 2020 Hyderabad rains. The review does not establish where the footage was originally recorded: FACTLY says it could not confirm the location because it found no further information about the video. Its conclusion is therefore about the footage’s timing and its connection to the claimed Hyderabad event, not a confirmed alternative location. The review distinguishes this old video from other, recent visuals of vehicles being washed away in Hyderabad, which it says were available separately. That distinction matters: footage of similar flooding in the same city does not establish that this particular video shows the claimed place and date.

Pagella PoliticaDisasters & emergencies

«Dati scientifici, in questo caso di Ispra, ci rammentano che il 91 per cento dei comuni italiani si trova in zone a rischio [idrogeologico], seppure a rischio diversificato, e l’80 per cento del nostro territorio, quindi, la stragrande maggioranza, anche in questo caso, si trova in condizioni di rischio»

Publisher’s rating: Nì

Environment Minister Sergio Costa made the statement in the context of severe weather that caused landslides and floods in north-western Italy on October 3. In an October 7 parliamentary question, he attributed to Ispra the figures that 91 per cent of Italian municipalities and 80 per cent of the country’s territory were at hydrogeological risk. The review checked these two figures against Ispra’s most up-to-date data at the time, from a report published in June 2018. It found that they did not describe the same thing accurately: the municipalities figure was supported, but the national territory figure was not. (S1)

FACTLYDisasters & emergencies

Video of a first car accident which took place on Durgam Cheruvu cable bridge, Hyderabad

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video showing a girl being hit by a car, presented as footage of the first car accident on the newly built Durgam Cheruvu cable bridge in Hyderabad. FACTLY’s review examined whether the video actually showed an accident at that location, rather than whether an accident of that kind occurred somewhere else. It reports that Telangana State Police specifically addressed the location claim, stating that the accident in the video did not take place on the bridge and describing the video as fake. The review also describes how it checked the video’s history: reverse image searches of keyframes led to older social-media posts sharing the same footage. It says it found a Facebook post from 2017 and other posts from a few years earlier. That earlier circulation supports the conclusion that the footage was not new when shared as a recent bridge accident. The review does not identify the actual location or date of the filmed accident, so those details cannot be established from the supplied text. Taken together, the police statement directly contradicts the claimed bridge location, while the older posts undermine the presentation of the clip as new footage of an incident there. The evidence described in the review therefore addresses the specific attribution attached to the video, not the broader possibility of other accidents on the bridge.

FACTLYDisasters & emergencies

Video of camels being washed away in floods in Rajasthan

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video presented as showing camels being swept away in floods in Rajasthan. FACTLY’s review says that the video’s visuals are from Saudi Arabia, not Rajasthan, and identifies them with flash floods there in 2018. This directly contradicts the claimed location and event setting. The review describes its verification method: reverse-image searches of screenshots from the circulating video led to a news video containing the same visuals. That video was posted by the verified YouTube channel Northeast Live on 15 November 2018; its description said, “Flash floods claim 30 lives in Saudi Arabia.” FACTLY reports that the news video identifies the footage as being from flood-hit Saudi Arabia in 2018. The review also points to social-media posts from 2018 that shared the same video as footage of Saudi flash floods. It notes that the video resurfaced amid more recent flash floods in Rajasthan, when it was recirculated with a misleading Rajasthan attribution. The evidence presented therefore supports the conclusion that the footage is real flood footage, but not footage of floods in Rajasthan.

FACTLYDisasters & emergencies

Image of recent MI-17 helicopter crash in Ladakh

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned an image circulated as showing a recent MI-17 helicopter crash in Ladakh. FACTLY reports that the image instead shows a helicopter crash in Kedarnath, Uttarakhand, and says it has nothing to do with Ladakh. This directly addresses the location and provenance asserted in the claim. FACTLY says its reverse-image search led to news articles featuring the same image. It describes one article, dated 30 April 2020, as reporting an MI-17 crash in Kedarnath on that same day, and says other reports and a news video covered the incident. The review therefore bases its identification on the image appearing in reporting about a crash elsewhere, rather than on evidence of a Ladakh crash. There is a dating inconsistency in the supplied review text: it first calls the image one of a crash in Kedarnath “back in 2018,” but later describes the article dated 30 April 2020 as reporting the crash on that same day. The excerpt does not resolve that discrepancy. Its stated conclusion about the image’s location is nevertheless clear: the image is from Kedarnath, not Ladakh.