Wrong storm footage passed off as Florida’s Hurricane Milton

AAP FACTCHECK – A viral video claims to show the devastating impact of Hurricane Milton in Florida, including homes being torn apart, trees falling over and a giant inflatable duck being blown down a street. 

This is false. The footage is unrelated to Hurricane Milton. Many of the clips have been posted online previously and attributed to storms in other states or countries.  

The video was posted to Facebook on October 9 (Florida eastern daylight time), the same day the hurricane made landfall in the state. At time of writing, the footage had racked up almost 1.5 million views. 

The same video has also appeared on other social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube. 

It includes 18 clips of what it claims to be damage from the recent hurricane. Overlaid text reads: “Hurricane Milton just Landfall [sic] in Florida with Wind Speed 185 mph as Category 5.” 

The US National Weather Service says hurricanes that make landfall at category five level can inflict “catastrophic damage” on homes, trees and power poles. 

Hurricane Milton was rated as a category five hurricane offshore but weakened to category three by the time it hit Florida on October 9. 

CBS News reports that at least 24 people were killed in the storm that left a repair bill experts say could top $US50 billion. 

However, the damage visible in the Facebook video was not caused by Hurricane Milton. 

The first scene in the video is a boulder being blown by the wind. AAP FactCheck found footage of the boulder was posted to YouTube on October 4, 2024, and attributed to storms in Acapulco, Mexico (35 seconds). 

Other clips from the video are similarly repurposed from footage shot before Hurricane Milton hit Florida. 

One section  (11 seconds) shows a giant inflatable bear tumbling down a street. The bear has the word ‘FORUM’ in large letters on its back. 

Media reports about the incident show the bear was swept away from outside the Plaza Forum shopping centre in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on May 19, 2024. 

A clip of debris blowing through the air outside a restaurant (16 seconds) was filmed during a May 2022 tornado in Gaylord, Michigan. 

The footage was previously posted to Facebook on May 21, 2022.

AAP FactCheck has verified the location at which the clip was filmed as Main Street, Gaylord, as seen on Google Street View. 

Footage of a roof being blown off a petrol station forecourt (21 seconds) was shot in Mountain View, Missouri, in May 2024, according to a Facebook post on June 5, 2024, by content agency Storyful. 

A clip of a tree toppling over in the wind (29 seconds) was previously posted to TikTok in July 2024 with a caption explaining it was filmed in the Mexican city of Guadalajara.

A clip of a flooded stairwell (36 seconds) was previously posted to TikTok in June 2024, where it was said to show flooding in the German town of Rudersberg. 

A collapsing wooden house frame (41 seconds) seen in the video can be traced back to an incident in Houston, Texas, reported by Fox Weather on May 21, 2024. 

Footage of a large inflatable duck being blown down a highway (48 seconds)  that the video suggests is Florida on October 9 was actually filmed in the town of Frankenmuth, Michigan, in May 2024.

Near the end of the video, a blue portaloo is seen being pushed around by the wind (1 minute). The same footage was posted to TikTok in August 2024, with the location tagged as Fort Myers, Florida.

While AAP FactCheck was unable to verify the origins of all 18 clips used in the video in question, most of the footage is verifiably not associated with Hurricane Milton.

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