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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

Videos related to Cyclone Amphan

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review examined two videos circulated as footage related to Cyclone Amphan, which made landfall in West Bengal on 20 May 2020. It found that neither video showed that cyclone: one depicted Cyclone Fani in Odisha in 2019, and the other showed Hurricane Michael in Florida in 2018. For the first video, the review identifies it as footage of Cyclone Fani battering coastal Odisha and says Fani made landfall in Puri on 03 May 2019. For the second, it reports finding the same video in a news channel’s October 2018 publication, titled “Video shows Hurricane Michael tearing home apart in Panama City Beach,” as well as on stock-video websites describing it as related to Hurricane Michael. The evidence therefore supports the review’s conclusion that older footage from other storms was falsely presented in the context of Amphan.

FACTLYDisasters & emergencies

Video of cyclone Amphan's wrath in the coastal districts of Odisha

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim was that a video showing thunder and lightning depicted Cyclone Amphan’s impact in Odisha’s coastal districts. The review places the claim in the context of Amphan making landfall in West Bengal on 20 May 2020, while noting that the cyclone caused damage in coastal areas of both West Bengal and Odisha. The decisive finding was that the video was already available online before the cyclone made landfall. The review says it had found the video on the internet at least since 26 April 2020—around three to four weeks earlier—so the footage could not show Amphan’s impact. The review therefore concludes that the claim is false. The review could not establish the video’s exact location. Its finding concerns the footage’s timing, not a confirmed identification of where it was filmed.

Deutsche Presse-AgenturDisasters & emergencies

Op Facebook is op 30 april 2020 een foto gepubliceerd die de indruk wekt dat het om een recent ongeluk in Nederland gaat. Familieleden van de slachtoffers worden opgeroepen contact op te nemen met de politie.

Publisher’s rating: Het Nationaal Cyber Security Centrum waarschuwt dat men nooit moet klikken op links van onbekende afzenders. Deze kunnen computervirussen bevatten. Cybercriminelen gebruiken ook verwijzingen naar de actualiteit, zoals COVID-19, om aandacht te trekken; als burgers "erin trappen", kan schadelijke software op de computer worden geïnstalleerd. Phishing blijft het grootste cyberveiligheidsprobleem voor burgers. Het is een belangrijke toegangspoort voor cybercriminelen tot mobiele telefoons, laptops en desktops.

台灣事實查核中心Disasters & emergencies

網傳男子在屋頂觸碰高壓電線墜樓影片，搭配文字「他不想再等14天」 ？

Publisher’s rating: 錯誤

The report examined a video showing a man on a rooftop touching high-voltage wires and falling, circulated with the caption “He doesn’t want to wait another 14 days,” which implied a connection to COVID-19 isolation measures. Its investigation found that the same footage had circulated online in July 2018, well before the pandemic-related claim. Versions in several languages had the same content and length, but did not carry the added caption. To trace the incident, the report says it reverse-searched stills from the video and compared the circulating clip with online versions. It also obtained assistance from Indian fact-checker Karen Rebelo, who identified the language spoken in the video as Kannada, used in South India. The report cites contemporaneous news accounts identifying the incident as having occurred in Tamil Nadu, India: a man called Raju T, reportedly intoxicated, climbed a four-storey building and died after grasping a live power line. The report’s central distinction is between the real accident shown in the footage and the later text attached to it. The evidence it describes places the video online in 2018 and the incident in South India, so the footage does not depict a man acting because he could not wait out COVID-19 isolation. The report concludes that the caption was added to an unrelated accident video.

FACTLYDisasters & emergencies

Gas leaked for the second time at LG Polymers premises near Visakhapatnam

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned reports of a second gas leak at LG Polymers’ chemical plant in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, following the deadly styrene leak there on May 7, 2020. FACTLY reports that the first incident killed eleven people and made hundreds ill, and that social-media posts and some live media coverage then described another leak at the plant. This establishes that the review is about a reported second leak at the same premises, not a separate industrial incident. To assess those reports, FACTLY cites a clarification from the Andhra Pradesh Police’s official Twitter account. According to the review, police said the reports of a second gas leak were false, while explaining that the plant’s maintenance team had released some vapour while repairing the system. The review therefore distinguishes the reported maintenance-related vapour from a second gas leak; it does not say that nothing was released at all. The supplied review excerpt identifies the police tweet as its supporting evidence, but does not include the tweet itself or describe independent testing or other verification. Its stated conclusion rests on the police clarification as reported by FACTLY. The distinction in that account—maintenance vapour during repairs versus a second gas leak—is the basis for the review’s assessment.