Footage of fishing buoys washed away by waves has been shared by social media users with a false claim that it shows the impact of a 7.5-magnitude earthquake which struck the western coast of Japan on New Year’s Day. The video in fact depicts scenes from the tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011.
“Ohh, this is terrifying. Earthquake in Japan,” reads overlaid text in Thai on a TikTok video posted on January 2, 2024.
The video’s caption also shared it with the hashtags #latest and #todaysnews.
The 31-second video shows round objects gradually being swept away by massive waves.
The Tiktok video has garnered over a million views and has been shared over 2,000 times.
The video circulated online a day after a powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck Ishikawa prefecture on the western coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu on New Year’s Day. Officials say at least 92 people were killed, with 242 missing.
The earthquake also toppled buildings, caused a major fire and tore apart roads.
Tsunami waves over a metre high struck the port of Wajima, and a series of smaller tsunamis were reported elsewhere, including as far away as the northern island of Hokkaido.
The same video has also been shared on Facebook here and on X here.
Comments show some users believe the footage was recent.
“We just celebrated New Year’s Day. May everyone be safe and god protect all of you,” a TikTok user commented.
“So scary. Don’t it be like the 2011 #tsunami,” this X account wrote in Thai on January 1, 2024.
However, the footage is old and shows tsunami waves hitting a coastal town in Japan’s Miyagi prefecture in March 2011.
Old clip from 2011
A Google reverse image search using one of the video’s keyframes matched a video published on YouTube in 2011 (archived link).
The video is longer than the clip shared in the misleading posts. Its Japanese title reads in English as “Tsunami Ogatsu town Tachihama.”
Ogatsu town is located in the port city of Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture. The area is one of the communities which bore the brunt of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11, 2011, with 4,000 of its residents dead or missing (archived links here and here).
Below is a screenshot comparison between the misleading TikTok post (left) and YouTube video uploaded in 2011 (right), with key elements added by AFP:
The same video and its screenshot also appeared in a blog called “earthquake 2011” (archived link).
The blog’s Japanese title roughly reads in English as, “Video showing the moment the tsunami approaches right in front of the person filming in Ishinomaki city.”
AFP was able to geolocate the area shown in the video using Google Street View images.
The scene in the footage corresponds to the street view image from July 2011 here, in a coastal area of Ishinomaki city, Miyagi prefecture (archived link).
Below are screenshot comparisons of the scenes in the video (left) and the Google Street View images (right) with similarities highlighted by AFP:
AFP has debunked other misinformation related to the latest earthquake in Japan here, here and here.
