Fact-Check: Old, Unrelated Video Falsely Linked to Dubai Floods

We found that the video has been online since at least 2018.

Fact-Check: Old, unrelated video shared as one from Dubai. 

(Source: Altered by The Quint) 

A video of a flood-like situation with camels struggling in the water is being shared as recent visuals from Dubai.

What happened in Dubai?: Last week, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) experienced its most intense rainfall, resulting in flooding in Dubai.

• The lack of regular rainfall has led to inadequate drainage in many roads and areas in Dubai, exacerbating the flooding.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: X/Screenshot)

This post recorded 39.2K views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Are these visuals from Dubai?: The claim is false.

• Team WebQoof was able to trace the video back to 2018, which predates the recent flood in Dubai.

How did we find out?: We divided the viral video into multiple screenshots and ran a Google and Yandex reverse image search on some of them.

• The results showed us two videos which matched with the frames of the viral video.

• The first video was uploaded by Facebook user Alhaji Ibrahim Butayowo on 27 October 2018.

• It was uploaded with the caption, "The call of the misguided was answered today before Parliament" (translated from Arabic to English using Google Translate).

• A comment under the video wrote, "Hadshi is in Jordan, walking to Morocco."

Here are the similarities between the two. 

(Source: Altered by The Quint) 

• Another video on YouTube by a channel named, 'Northeast Live' uploaded a similar video with the title, "Flash flood claims 30 lives in Saudi Arabia." It was uploaded on 15 November 2018."

• We also found a report on MalayalamNewsDaily from 26 October 2018 which contained a frame similar to the viral video.

• It stated that the heavy rainfall in Tabuk city of Saudi Arabia "swept away camels."

• We ran a relevant keyword search in English and Arabic to verify whether such an incident occurred in Tabuk in 2018. The keywords used were "tabuk floods 2018 camels."

• An Al-Arabiya report from 26 October 2018 stated that Tabuk experienced intense rainfall and hailstorms, causing flooding in valleys and reefs.

Conclusion: Clearly, an old and unrelated video is being linked to the floods in Dubai.

(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9540511818 , or e-mail it to us at [e-mail] and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)