Stand up for the facts!

Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.
We need your help.

More Info

I would like to contribute

Facebook posts

stated on August 26, 2023 in a Facebook post:

Video shows the state of “Great Britain now,” with “78,000 people under the water.”

By Loreben Tuquero August 30, 2023

Video doesn’t show ‘Great Britain now’ with people underwater. Clips are misrepresented

If Your Time is short

There are no credible reports that 78,000 people are "under the water" in Great Britain.
This video contains numerous clips from past weather events, some of which are not in Britain.
The video’s opening image was not from a disaster at all but from a staged 2019 climate protest near London’s Tower Bridge.

See the sources for this fact-check

The Facebook video proclaimed catastrophic news.

"Great Britain now! 78,000 people under the water!" read an Aug. 26 Facebook video’s caption. The video flashed through images showing vehicles and structures submerged in water, including a house floating in what looked like the River Thames in front of London’s Tower Bridge.

But a close look showed the video’s premise doesn’t hold up. Of its 14 clips showing footage of severe weather incidents, we found 10 were misrepresented. We couldn’t trace the other four to their original sources.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

We found no credible news reports about such widespread flooding in Britain. But we did find an Aug. 26 YouTube video with the same claim and images.

Sign up for PolitiFact texts

However, reverse-image searches showed at least 10 clips in the video showed neither "Great Britain now," nor people underwater. The videos were taken in different locations — some outside Britain — and in different years.

The first clip was uploaded in 2019, when the activist group Extinction Rebellion staged a submerged house in the River Thames to protest climate change inaction.

Another was taken in February 2022, showing a pub underwater in Telford, England. A separate was from February 2022 showed the impact of Storm Franklin in North Ayrshire, Scotland.

Viral image

stated on September 8, 2021 in a Facebook post

"Florida has had 119 hurricanes since 1850,” yet experts are saying “the last one was due to climate change."

The video also included footage showing River Taff in Cardiff, Wales, in January after heavy rainfall, "equivalent of a month’s rain" in 24 hours. Another showed a farm surrounded by floodwater in the Tywi Valley, Wales, also in January.

One clip of flooded streets in London was uploaded in 2022 after flash flooding. Meanwhile, the location of a clip of lightning striking a tree is unclear but it was circulating as early as 2017.

Some of the videos images were not from Britain. Video of cars along flooded streets was captured in Polokwane, South Africa, this past February. One was uploaded in September 2019 and was taken in Canada. Another one, uploaded in May 2022, showed hail in Texas.

There have been major floods in Britain in recent years, including throughout the United Kingdom in early August, but no single event of the scale that this video describes. Experts warn that there is a growing risk of floods across the United Kingdom because of climate change.

We rate the claim that a video showed "78,000 people under the water" now in Great Britain False.