Fact Check: This video from Japan shows horrific 2011 tsunami, not recent floods in Pakistan

Social media is full of videos and photos of the destructive deluge in Pakistan. One such video supposedly from Karachi shows vehicles on the road being washed away by rushing water. But is this video from Karachi at all?

The devastating floods that hit Pakistan in June have so far affected more than 33 million people and claimed over one thousand lives. Social media is full of videos and photos of the destructive deluge in the country. One such video supposedly from Karachi, Pakistan, shows vehicles on the road being washed away by rushing water.

But is this video from Karachi at all? AFWA’s investigation found that the video was taken during the 2011 Thoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, one of the most powerful earthquakes of all time.

Upon reverse-searching frames from the video, we came across a 2014 blog that contained the same shots. It said the footage is from around the Ishinomaki port area. Ishinomaki is a city in Japan’s Honshu mainland. It was one of the worst hit cities in 2011.

Subsequent searches led us to the same video uploaded to a YouTube channel in April 2012. The title of the video said, “2011 Japan Tsunami: Ishinomaki”. As per the description of this video, the footage was shot from the rooftop of Ishinomaki Gas. The channel had also given a link to its source, a different YouTube channel that shared the video in December 2011, proving that the video was more than a decade old.

We looked for the area mentioned on Google Street View and found remarkable similarities between the video and the location. This proceed that the video was shot in Japan.