Fact-Check: Old Visuals of Marina Beach Falsely Linked to Cyclone Mandous

The video of Chennai's Marina Beach has been on the internet since November 2021.

The old video shows a flooded Marina beach, and is being shared as a recent video.

(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

A video showing a flooded Marina Beach in Chennai is being widely shared across social media with users linking it to Cyclone Mandous, which made landfall on 10 December.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

(Archives of more posts with similar claims can be seen here, here, and here.)

What is the truth?: The video has been on the internet since November 2021 and is not related to Cyclone Mandous.

How did we find out?: Using InVID, a video verification tool, we divided the clip into keyframes and ran reverse image searches on some of them.

On Google, the search led us to a report by news website, Scroll, dated 12 November 2021, which carried a tweet with a longer version of the viral video. The article was about the torrential rains in Chennai.

The article was published on 12 November 2021.

(Source: The Scroll/Altered by The Quint)

The tweet shared in the article was from 11 November 2021, while another tweet with the same video was also shared around the same time.

Both identified the location as Marina Beach.

The tweet was shared on 11 November 2021, and identified the location as Marina beach.

(Source: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)

Where was the video taken?: We looked for visuals of Marina beach using Google Maps' street view feature.

Here, we saw spheres at the beach's walkway which can also be partially seen at the bottom of the frame, as well as an electrical junction box next to square structures.

(Note: Swipe right to view both images.)

The spheres are identical.

The square structures bear resemblance in both stills.

We were also able to match a grey building in the background.

A similar grey structure is seen in the background.

(Source: Facebook/Google Maps/Altered by The Quint)

Conclusion: While the video is indeed from Chennai's Marina Beach, it has been on the internet since November 2021 and is not related to Cyclone Mandous.

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