PeakMetrics / Fact Checks
Disasters & emergencies fact checks
Explore claims publishers have checked about disasters & emergencies. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.
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Search by text or image3,262 published reviews in this topic
Photo of a road submerged in floodwater in Bihar
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The claim concerned a photo of a road submerged in floodwater that was being presented on social media as showing Bihar. FACTLY’s review concluded that the image did not depict the recent Bihar floods: it was taken during flooding in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, in 2019. This makes the location and timing attached to the circulating photo misleading; the review does not dispute that the photo shows flooding.
Family sitting on the top of their flood-hit house in Bihar
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The claim concerns a photograph circulated as showing a family sheltering on top of its flood-hit house in Bihar. FACTLY’s review investigated the photograph itself rather than relying on the caption. It reports using a reverse image search, which led to an image on the Permaculture Research Institute website. That article discussed flooding and riverbank erosion in Bangladesh, and credited the photograph to Shiree, Practical Action Bangladesh. The review then followed that credit to the EEP Shiree website, where it found a link to the organization’s Flickr page. The caption there identified the photograph as taken in 2011 as part of a Practical Action Bangladesh programme. The review also found a similar photograph in a weADAPT article about household-level adaptation in Bangladesh’s south-central coastal region. Together, these sources place the image in Bangladesh, not Bihar. FACTLY’s conclusion is that an older photograph related to floods in Bangladesh was falsely presented as depicting the conditions in flood-hit Bihar. The evidence described in the review supports that conclusion through the image’s earlier publication, credit and caption; the excerpt does not provide further information about who first shared it as a Bihar photograph.
Photo of a family having their tea while sitting in flood water in Surat, Gujarat.
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The claim concerns a photograph of a family having tea while sitting in floodwater, said to show an incident in Surat, Gujarat. FACTLY’s review says the same photo was also circulated as being from Delhi. Its investigation concluded that the image was not from Surat: it was taken in Mansa district, Punjab, and dated to 2016. This corrects both the claimed location and the impression that the picture documented a current event in Surat. [S1]
Video of a truck crashing into a helicopter in Amritsar, India
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The claim concerns a video showing a truck hit a helicopter that is about to take off, presented as an incident in Amritsar, India. FACTLY investigated that specific video and concluded the incident took place in Rio Branco, Brazil, rather than Amritsar. To trace the footage, the review says it used screenshots in reverse image searches. Those searches returned Brazilian websites whose articles placed the incident in Rio Branco. The reviewer then searched Google using keywords and found a Daily Mail article featuring the same video; FACTLY says its account also corroborated the Brazilian location. Thus, the evidence described in the review challenges the location attached to the video: the footage was of an incident in Brazil, not the claimed Indian setting.
భారత దేశం లో ఒక లారీ హెలికాప్టర్ ని ఢీకొట్టిన ఘటన వీడియో
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
பஞ்சாப் அமிர்தசரஸில் ஹெலிகாப்டர் மற்றும் ட்ரக் மோதி விபத்து
Publisher’s rating: Fake
Video of a landslide on Goa-Madgaon highway
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The claim was that a video showed a landslide on the Goa-Madgaon highway, causing the Mumbai-Goa highway to close. FACTLY’s investigation identified the landslide shown in the video as having occurred in Indonesia, not on the claimed highway. The review states that it took place in the settlements of Cianjur and Sukanagara in April 2020. To trace the footage, the investigators used screenshots from the video in a reverse image search. That search led them to a video from Indonesian news channel Tribun Jateng, which reported the incident in Cianjur and Sukanagara. The review also cites separate reporting by Indonesian news channel Metro TV News, which located the landslide in Cianjur. These details connect the circulated footage to the Indonesian event rather than the claimed Goa location.
Images of recent flood in Assam, UP, Bihar
Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING
The post presented images as showing recent floods in Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The review found that the images did not all come from recent flooding: some depicted floods from earlier years, while others matched more recent floods in the named states. Its conclusion therefore applies to the post’s presentation of the images as a set, not to whether floods occurred in those places. To investigate, the review reports using Google reverse image searches and checking news articles where matching images had been published. It traced the first image to Bihar’s August 2017 floods, and the third to flooding in Assam in August 2019. Those older origins contradict the post’s implication that every image showed a recent flood. The review traced the second image to a recent flood in Bihar and the fourth to a recent flood in Uttar Pradesh. Thus, two images were described as recent, while two were identified as older. The review’s qualification is important: the images did relate to floods in Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, but the claim that they all showed recent floods was misleading.
හදිසි අනතුරක් හේතුවෙන් අප අතරින් සමුගත් යාපනය විශ්ව විද්යාලයේ තාක්ෂණ පීඨයේ කථිකාචාර්ය ගයාත්රි දිල්රුක්ෂි මෙනවිය ඔබට නිවන් සුව | Lecturer attached to Jaffna university succumbed to injuries following an elephant attack
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The post said that Gayathri Dilrukshi, a lecturer at the University of Jaffna’s Kilinochchi campus, had died after a wild elephant attack. The review describes the post as repeating a death report and adds that some commenters disputed it, saying she was still alive. The incident itself was not invented: the review’s conclusion says she had been attacked by a wild elephant and was receiving treatment.
has priyanka gandhi shared old images as assam bihar flood?
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
Recent photo of a government hospital ward in Patna (Bihar), flooded with rainwater.
Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING
The claim presents a photo of a government hospital ward in Patna flooded with rainwater as a recent condition. FACTLY identifies the pictured facility as Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH), in Patna, but says the image shows an incident from 2018—not a recent scene. The review explains that heavy rain that year left hospital wards flooded with rainwater and sewage. [S1: “The photo shared in the post is from 2018 and is of a hospital ward in Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH), Patna. In 2018, due to the heavy rains, the hospital wards in NMCH were filled with rainwater and sewage.”] The review describes its check as a reverse image search of the photo in the post. It reports finding a similar photo in a Hindustan Times article dated 30 July 2018, whose account placed knee-deep rainwater in NMCH wards, including intensive care units, after continuous heavy rain in Patna. That earlier reporting supports the review’s identification of the image as documentation of the 2018 flooding rather than evidence of the hospital’s recent condition. [S1: “On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, a similar photo was found in an article published by ‘Hindustan Times’ on ‘30 July 2018’. In the article, it is mentioned that because of the continuous heavy rains in Patna, hospital wards including ICUs inside the Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMCH) were filled with knee-deep rainwater.”] The distinction is about when the photo was taken and what it depicts, not whether flooding occurred: the review says the image shows a real NMCH waterlogging incident, but that the post presents old imagery as recent. It also mentions a similar incident at the same hospital in 2019, which is separate from the 2018 event identified as the source of this photo. [S1: “In 2019, similar water-logging incident took place in the Nalanda Medical college Hospital.”]
Photo of a road full of stagnant knee-deep rainwater in PM Narendra Modi’s constituency Varanasi
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The claim concerns a photograph of a road covered by knee-deep stagnant rainwater, said to show conditions in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency, Varanasi. The review says a banner beside the road showed Modi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and other BJP leaders, but explains that this did not establish where the photograph was taken. To investigate the image, FACTLY reports conducting a reverse-image search. It found a similar photograph in a Patrika article, which identified the scene as a railway bridge underpass in Allahabad city and described it as flooded during the 2018 monsoon. The review further reports that Patrika credited the photograph to Rajesh Kumar Singh and that the same image was found on the AP Images website, also identified with an Allahabad railway underpass. The review places the image’s setting in August 2018 and distinguishes Allahabad from Varanasi: it states that BJP leader Rita Bahuguna Joshi represented the Allahabad Lok Sabha constituency. On that basis, it concludes that the photograph was from Allahabad, not evidence of road conditions in Modi’s Varanasi constituency. The image’s political banner therefore does not support the location asserted in the post.
శ్రీకాకుళం జిల్లా టెక్కలిలో బోల్తా పడిన మద్యం లారీ వీడియో
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
In een post op Facebook wordt beweerd dat er maandag 13 juli in Hoensbroek een verkeersongeluk zou zijn gebeurd met één dode en drie gewonden als gevolg. De posting doet ook een oproep: "Help de politie de slachtoffers te identificeren." Er staat een foto bij van een zwarte, zwaar gehavende auto.
Publisher’s rating: De post is compleet fout. Er heeft op de aangegeven dag en plaats geen dodelijk verkeersongeluk plaatsgevonden. De foto is genomen na een ongeluk met dodelijke afloop in juli 2019 in België.
ಕರ್ನಾಟಕದ ಮೈಸೂರು ರಸ್ತೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ನಡೆದ ಅಪಘಾತದ ವಿಡಿಯೋ.
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
కూలిపోయిన జమ్నగర్-జునాగర్ హైవే బ్రిడ్జి మూడు నెలల కిందట ప్రధానమంత్రి నరేంద్ర మోదీ ప్రారంభించారు
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
