FALSE: This video of cattle being swept away by floods is not from West Pokot in Kenya
The video shows flooding in Mexico caused by Tropical Storm Hanna in July 2020
A tweet with a video claiming to show cattle being swept away by floodwater in Marich, West Pokot is FALSE.
The tweet claims that the incident occurred on the evening of Thursday, August 13.
However, data from the Kenya Meteorological Department shows that there was no rainfall in the region during the mentioned period.
Additionally, a reverse image search on the keyframes of the video shows the clip is from Mexico, and shows flooding caused by Tropical Storm Hanna, which caused heavy rains and led to the Zacualpan river overflowing.
Tropical Storm Hanna hit Nayarit, in Mexico on July 26, 2020, bringing severe flooding that caused considerable property damage and also led to the loss of human life and cattle.
An online article by Mexican publication La Jornada on July 28, carried the same video clip used in the post.
PesaCheck also found an article published on July 27, 2020, by a Mexican news website Como Sucedio which carried the same viral clip. The headline of the article translates in English to “Zacualpan River overflows in Nayarit and drags cattle”.
PesaCheck has looked into a tweet claiming to show a video clip of cattle being washed away by floodwaters in Marich, West Pokot, Kenya and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker James Okong’o and edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Enock Nyariki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
