Fact Check: Old photos of hurricanes in the Caribbean shared as Tropical Storm Ian's devastation in Cuba

India Today AFWA found that old photos of Hurricane Irma and Tropical Storm Laura in 2017 and 2020 are being shared as devastation caused by Tropical Storm Ian.

Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in Cuba on September 27, caused a total blackout and destroyed some of the most important tobacco farms in the island country. Visuals of the destruction caused by Ian, which has now been downgraded into a tropical storm in Florida in the US, have been widely shared online.

Of these is a set of four photos that purportedly show people wading through knee-deep water and houses knocked down by the storm in Cuba. The archived version of a similar post can be seen here.

AFWA found that while some of the photos are from Cuba, they are old and not related to Tropical Storm Ian.

With the help of a reverse image search, we found the first three photos show the destruction caused by Hurricane Irma that hit Cuba in 2017. The photos that show people wading through a waterlogged road and waves crashing against the seafront were published by Reuters in September 2017. According to Reuters, the first photo was from a flooded street in Havana, Cuba, while the second one was from El Malecon in the Cuban capital.

The Associated Press published the third photo, noting that it was shot on September 10, 2017, in a flooded street after the passage of Hurricane Irma in Havana.

We found the fourth photo, showing the destroyed houses, on Getty Images . The photo, credited to Agence France-Presse, was from August 2020. As per its description, it showed devastation caused in the streets of Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, after Tropical Storm Laura battered the region.

It is hence clear that these photos do not show the devastation caused by Tropical Storm Ian at all.