Published 15:32 IST, April 23rd 2020
Fact Check: Was Japan hit by a violent tsunami on April 22, 2020?
Fact Check: There have been many viral videos of a possible tsunami that hit Japan on April 22. Are these videos from the same day and did the tsunami happen?
The news and media in the current times are responsible to not only show the real news but also to not mislead the audience and lead them astray. Social media has also become a channel through which news gets transported throughout the world, but it is important to first understand whether anything is real or fake. There have been many videos circulating on the internet of a 'possible' tsunami that is happening in Japan.
Claim:
Many Facebook pages have started live videos or showed videos of a tsunami destroying buildings and taking away everything with its waves. These videos have different scenes where one can see houses floating away, flyovers breaking down, and the port of the city being destroyed. As these pages added the feature of 'live' video, many people started sharing it on their profiles and prayed for the safety of the Japanese people.
Rating: Fake
The videos that are being shared by people on social media are that of the Tsunami that happened in 2011 in Japan. These videos are being re-circulated by people on their social media. Many comments on these videos also talk about how these videos are outdated and old.
The videos shared online claiming to be of April 2020 is 2011 footage
Origin:
The videos started making rounds after the news that there is an imminent tsunami that can hit Japan. The weather reports in Japan had claimed that there was a possibility for the country to experience a Tsunami at Hokkaido in northern Japan and Iwate in the northeast. A Japanese news portal also talked about how the authorities warned that the people need to be prepared for the worst-case scenario and also a mega-earthquake. The 2011 Tsunami was a result of an earthquake of the magnitude 9.0. It left more than 15,000 dead. The 2011 tsunami was focused on the Japan Trench. Since the 2020 warning is of the same place, people used this to spread the wrong information. There has been no tsunami news in Japan. It is also important to note that something as disastrous as an earthquake in Japan would have been covered by the news portals.
Google Trends Analysis
People have been looking for the news of the tsunami on the internet as well. The search saw a peak on April 22 at 9.30 PM in India. It is important to note that at 9.30 PM IST is 1 AM in the morning in Japan. The videos do not show snippets from late night.
Source: Google Trends
Updated 15:32 IST, April 23rd 2020