A 2015 video showing two people being airlifted to safety after severe flooding in Japan has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on posts falsely claiming it was filmed recently in Bangladesh. While Bangladeshi authorities said monsoon rains flooded parts of the South Asian country in August 2024, killing dozens of people, the footage was falsely re-shared in posts praising the Bangladesh army’s rescue efforts.
The video has been viewed over 450,000 times after being shared on Facebook on August 22, 2024. The Bengali caption reads: “Bangladesh Army is our pride.”
Flash floods caused devastating damage in Bangladesh in August and claimed at least 40 lives (archived links here and here).
The South Asian country with 170 million inhabitants and hundreds of rivers has been frequently affected by floods in recent decades.
Monsoon rains cause great destruction every year, but climate change is altering weather patterns and leading to an increase in extreme weather events.
The floods deepened the suffering of a country still reeling from weeks of political unrest that culminated in the overthrow of autocratic ruler Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India by helicopter.
She was replaced by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who will head a transitional government that faces the monumental task of initiating democratic reforms in the run-up to the expected new elections.
The video was also shared on Facebook along with a similar false claim here and here.
Video about the floods in Japan
A reverse image search of the video’s key frames on Google and a subsequent keyword search yielded footage published on YouTube by the British newspaper International Business Times on September 10, 2015 (archived link).
“Japan floods: Couple and dogs rescued from roof after Joso City was submerged,” was the title of the video.
AFP reported at the time that parts of the town of Joso, north of the Japanese capital Tokyo, were washed away when a levee on the Kinugawa River gave way after heavy rains (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison between the video mistakenly shared on Facebook (left) and the footage from International Business Times UK (right):
Similar clips were published in reports on the floods in Japan by US broadcaster NBC News and Turkish broadcaster TRT World (archived links here and here).
AFP also published a photo of the rescue operation courtesy of The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.
Below is a screenshot of the image from the AFP archives:
