By Hazel Gandhi
An old video showing flooding in the New York subway is viral online with the false claim that the visuals are from the recent flash floods in the city.
BOOM found that the clip is old and was taken in September 2021 during Hurricane Ida, a destructive Atlantic hurricane that claimed 55 direct and 32 indirect lives as a tropical cyclone and caused damage to the tune of $75 billion, according to the National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report.
A state of emergency was declared in New York after severe storms led to flash floods in several parts of the city on September 29, 2023. Boroughs such as Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens were especially affected and videos showing abandoned cars and waterlogged streets have since gone viral on social media.
The video of the flooded subway is being shared with the caption, "More footage from the New York City flooding. Does anyone know what caused this?"
Click here to view the tweet and here for an archive.
Click here to view the post.
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video is from September 2021 when New York City was hit by hurricane Ida.
We did a keyword search using "New York subway flooded" on Facebook, which led us to a post by American news outlet ABC News, uploaded on September 2, 2021.
The post contained a footage, which bore close resemblance to the viral video, and was shared with the caption, "Water cascades onto a New York City subway train as remnants of Hurricane Ida bring flooding rain to the Northeast."
We compared some keyframes from the viral video to the one shared by ABC News, and found that it was the exact same footage. The train number and the station name, Jefferson Street, also matched in both the videos (see comparison below).
Additionally, we found that ABC News had attributed the video to 'Alex Etling via Storyful'.
Taking a cue from this, we ran a search for the user's post on X and found that they had shared the video on September 2, 2021 with the caption, "Getting a bit of rain in New York City tonight…"
We went through the comments and found a reply by Etling where they had confirmed that the video was taken by them.
Click here to view.
Among other major outlets, NBC News and USA Today also used this footage around the same time. See here and here.
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