FALSE: Photos of Super Typhoon Rolly’s aftermath

At a glance:

• Claim: Photos show the aftermath of Super Typhoon Rolly, specifically those showing a damaged building and a fallen electric post in the middle of a road.
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: These photos depicted the impact of Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013.
• Why we fact-checked this: Posts containing these misrepresented photos were flagged by Facebook Claim Check. Similar posts were also spotted through CrowdTangle.

Complete details:

Facebook photosets contain two photos claiming to show the aftermath of Tropical Storm Rolly (Goni), a super typhoon when it hit land in Bato, Catanduanes. In particular, these images show a damaged building and a fallen electric post in the middle of a road.

Posts containing these two photos had captions attributing the damage to Rolly or implying that they showed affected areas in the Bicol region.

This claim was flagged by Facebook Claim Check, the platform’s tool for flagging dubious content. Posts containing this claim were also spotted through social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.

This is false. The photos were taken out of context.

A reverse image search showed that the photos actually depicted the aftermath of Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in November 2013.

The misrepresented photos were often mixed with other photos that showed the impact of Rolly. For one, a post that had the image of the fallen electric post as the first in its photoset acquired 737 reactions, 123 comments, and 4,300 shares as of writing. Another post with the photo of the damaged building as its first photo gained 462 reactions, 13 comments, and 1,900 shares as of writing.

The photo of the damaged building was taken on November 10, 2013 by Bullit Marquez for the Associated Press. It was captioned, in part: “Residents stand outside damaged structures in Tacloban city, Leyte province central Philippines on Sunday, November 10, 2013. The city remains littered with debris from damaged homes as many complain of shortage of food, water and no electricity since the [Super] Typhoon Haiyan slammed into their province.”

The photo of the fallen electric post was part of a Reuters article published on November 10, 2013. It was taken by Romeo Ranoco and was captioned, “Survivors walk under a fallen electric post after super Typhoon Haiyan battered Tacloban city, central Philippines November 10, 2013.”

These were not the first photos to be misrepresented as ones depicting the destruction brought about by Rolly. Rappler earlier fact-checked another photo that Facebook users claimed was taken in Catanduanes after Rolly passed, but was, in fact, taken in Tacloban, Leyte during Super Typhoon Yolanda as well.

Rolly weakened into a tropical storm by 11 pm of November 1. Bicol’s Office of Civil Defense confirmed on Monday, November 2, that at least 10 people have died and 3 remain missing in the region. – Loreben Tuquero/Rappler.com

Keep us aware of suspicious Facebook pages, groups, accounts, websites, articles, or photos in your network by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time.