Does this video show images of flooding in Berlin "right now"? No, that's not true: Lead Stories was able to identify most of these scenes and none show flooding in Berlin. While several clips showing flooding from the summer of 2023, much of the footage is from the 2021 European flash floods in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany as well as towns in Austria. The most recent video footage, from September 16, 2023, does not show Germany, but Saint-Martin-de-Londres, France.
The video titled, "Germany right now! In Berlin, all highways are closed! A million gallons of water po..." was published to the Natural Disasters playlist of the page, Tatast in a September 24, 2023, post on Facebook watch. The post, which was no longer appeared to be active on Facebook at the time of writing, was captioned:
Germany right now! In Berlin, all highways are closed! A million gallons of water poured into the streets!
#maerica #USNews #latesnews #hurricane #nature #naturaldisastersurvival #weather #weathernews #climatechange #floods2023 #floods #flooded #flooding #UP #trandingnews #NewsUpdate #newstoday #UP #virals #Washington #unitedstates #storm #hailstorm #germany
This is what the post looked like on Facebook:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Sep 28 18:28:54 2023 UTC)
There are no current news reports about flooding in Berlin closing all the highways. A search of Google (archived here) shows the most significant recent flooding in Germany was caused by the August 16, 2023, storms, resulting in the temporary closure of the Frankfurt airport, about 265 miles from Berlin.
Lead Stories isolated still images from the video clips and used Google Lens and Yandex.com to conduct a reverse image search to find the origin of the videos. Of the 33 still frames, we identified the source of 19. These clips do show real weather events and flooding that did take place somewhere at some time, but does not show flooding in Berlin during the week of September 24, 2023.
Frankfurt, Germany Airport -- August 17, 2023
The most recent scenes of flooding in Germany in this video show the Frankfurt Airport during the flood of August 16, 2023, that closed the airport. These scenes (both pictured below) were identified (here and here). The airplanes pulled up to terminals at night appear at 21 seconds in, and at the 4:56 mark, a clip shows a torrent of water coming down concrete stairs indoors.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with Facebook screenshots taken on Thu Sep 28 20:04:15 2023 UTC)
France and Slovenia in the summer of 2023
A clip appearing at 40 seconds in (pictured below left) shows a flood in Saint-Martin-de-Londres, France, posted on X on September 16, 2023. Another clip that repeats at 1:27 and 2:23 minutes in (below right) shows a leaking gas storage tank floating in floodwaters in Nove Loke pri Mozirju, Slovenia, that was posted on YouTube on August 4, 2023.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with Facebook screenshots taken on Thu Sep 28 20:04:15 2023 UTC)
Floods in Austria and Germany in 2023
Of the remaining identified clips, only three show floods from 2023. Sölden, Austria, flooding appears at 42 seconds into the video (pictured below left) and was posted on YouTube on August 29, 2023. Flooding in Kassel, Germany (below center) appearing at 5:45 minutes in, was posted on X on June 22, 2023. A clip at 4:33 minutes in shows the heavy rain and hail that fell in Reutlingen, Germany (pictured below right) on August 4, 2023.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with Facebook screenshots taken on Thu Sep 28 20:04:15 2023 UTC)
The European floods of 2021
The remaining 10 identified clips (pictured below) were found to date back to the European flooding in the summer of 2021. In all, 12 European countries were affected by these floods. The Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia were the regions of Germany hardest hit by flash floods, where 157 people died, and in Belgium 31 people died. Austria and France also experienced significant flooding.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with Facebook screenshots taken on Thu Sep 28 20:04:15 2023 UTC)
The images (above reading left to right) correspond to the bullet points below -- arranged in the order they appear, and identified by the timestamps of the video on Facebook:
- 0:16: A car drives through hailstone flooding in South Germany posted on Twitter on June 28, 2021.
- 1:13: Salzburg, Austria, posted on Twitter on July 17, 2021.
- 1:57: Altena, in North Rhein-Westfalia, Germany, at the start of a Spiegel.de video compilation from July 15, 2021, cars can be seen floating away.
- 2:14: Besenfeld, Germany, posted on YouTube on June 28, 2021.
- 2:57: Schuld in the Ahrweiler district of Germany posted on Instagram on July 16, 2021.
- 3:23: A fire truck driving through deep floodwaters appears at 1:10 in the Spiegel.de video compilation from July 15, 2021.
- 3:28: Munich, Germany, scene of the Isar River cresting its banks published by BR24 July 20, 2021.
- 3:39: Erftstadt, Germany, scenes from inside the Marien-Hospital posted on Instagram on July 18, 2021.
- 5:11: Hallein, Austria, posted on Twitter July 17, 2021.
- 5:49: Landshut in lower Bavaria, Germany, published a week later by BR24 on July 6, 2021.
Lead Stories recently debunked another mislabeled compilation of weather videos. That video's clickbait headline was, "Great Britain now! 78,000 people under the water! London and Liverpool closed!" and like this one, featured videos from other years and other places than claimed.
