RESIDENTS of Lagos State recently experienced heavy floods following the torrential rain that left many families homeless for days.
The development sparked criticisms from the citizens who alleged that the situation has become a recurring problem due to negligence by the state government.
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However, some supporters of the government argued that the situation is a natural disaster which occurs everywhere in the world regardless of the government’s efforts.
Amidst this controversy, an X user, @Abdullahayofel, posted a video showing buildings submerged in water due to flood with a claim that the incident occurred in Austria.
“Austria is flooded. And @tokunbo_wahab and Sanwo-Olu cannot do anything about it?,” he posted on the social media platform.
The post has generated over 120,000 views, with more than 200 reposts, over 200 comments and over 500 likes as of July 9, 2024.
CLAIM
Video shows flooding incident in Austria.
THE FINDINGS
Findings by The FactCheckHub show that the claim is MISLEADING.
Austria is a landlocked country in Central Europe, bordered by Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Its capital is Vienna, and the country has a population of around 9 million people.
The FactCheckHub observed key details in the video and analyzed them using satellite imagery technology. The result shows that the viral video does not depict any flooding that occurred in Austria.
First, our researcher observed that one of the buildings submerged in water has an inscription “Savarauto Multimarcas”.
Using this clue, we searched for the name on Google and we found out that the building is owned by a car dealing company located in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
We also noted that the prefix (51) that precedes the phone number on the building corresponds to the area code for Porto Alegre, which is the capital city of the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the country.
Using these details, we conducted a street view search on Google Maps and it revealed that the building is located on Edu Chaves Street, Porto Alegre. The city experienced unprecedented flooding in May 2024 which led to loss of lives and properties, the BBC reported.
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Other buildings seen in the video, such as Peugeot, IESA, Lyon, and Kaizon Centre, confirmed the presence of various car dealers shops or businesses in the area.
This means the flooding incident seen in the footage did not occur in Austria as claimed by the X user, as the incident happened in Brazil.
THE VERDICT
The claim that the video shows flooding in Austria is MISLEADING; satellite imagery analysis shows that the footage depicts a flooding incident in Brazil.
Nurudeen Akewushola is a fact-checker with FactCheckHub. He has authored several fact checks which have contributed to the fight against information disorder. You can reach him via [email protected] and @NurudeenAkewus1 via Twitter.
