A video supposedly showing the impact of Super Typhoon Pepito (international name: Man-yi) has gone viral on various social media sites. This post is erroneous. The original video was published almost a month before the tropical cyclone hit the country.
As early as Nov. 15, copies of the video were posted by several social media users. One of the posts bore the caption: “Bagyong Pepito sa Cagayan Valley. Super Typhoon Pepito landfall in Cagayan.”
The brief 32-second clip showed strong winds pushing debris and cutting down a huge tree before the camera panned to two people hugging and screaming as the disaster unfolded before them.
The posts also carried several conflicting pieces of information: some claimed the video was taken in Catanduanes, while others were saying it was taken during onslaughts of completely different storms – Typhoons Ofel (Usagi) and Kristine (Trami).
This is not the case. The video already made the rounds online even before the mentioned typhoons made landfall in the country.
A reverse image search revealed the video was originally uploaded on Oct. 25 and was more than a minute long, showing the aftermath of the incident at the second half of its run. In the comments, the publisher said the video was taken in Zamboanga City – far from the regions struck by the recent typhoons.
Jessa Alejandro, the Facebook (FB) user who took the video, told VERA Files Fact Check that this freak weather event was not caused by any typhoon. “It was unexpected. The weather was fine during that time when suddenly, there was wind and rain. [The wind] was so strong that even trees fell,” she said in Filipino.
She was also surprised to see posts on other social media sites like TikTok, with people claiming ownership of the video and saying it was taken in their area, far from the original location.
The video with the wrong context emerged after Super Typhoon Pepito wreaked havoc, the last of the six cyclones to hit the country in less than a month. The government reported that over 1.8 million people were affected by Typhoons Nika, Ofel and Pepito.
The post spread to various social media platforms like FB, X, TikTok and Reddit. Its biggest distributors are FB page Jocelyn free time (created on Jan. 15, 2020) with over 24,800 reactions, 1,700 comments, 2,200 shares and 1.9 million views; TikTok user bnglsn_rose with over 446,100 views and 8,485 interactions; and X user RandomHeroWX with over 1 million views and 17,000 engagements.