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Tsunami Seen From a High-Rise
Snopes posted a photo (click to enlarge) that's going around accompanied by this text:Be sure and open the picture for a shock of your life to see what the tsunami looked like just before hitting Puket, Thailand. This picture is not a fake. It appears to have been taken from a hi-rise building window in downtown Phuket Thailand. The power of nature is hard to comprehend, especially the destructiveness of water.
Snopes says the status of the picture is undetermined, but I'd have a hard time believing it's real. First of all, is that actually downtown Phuket? I've never been there, so I couldn't say, but all the pictures of Thailand I've seen show it being a lot greener... a lot more vegetation. Second, almost every account of the tsunami I've read said that it didn't look like the classic hollywood image of a tidal wave towering above the land... which is exactly what this picture looks like. The wave in this picture is nearly as high as the tallest buildings, which would make it at least 100 feet high (or even higher). Of course, if this picture is real, it's pretty incredible.
Update: The cars are driving on the wrong side of the road for this to be a picture taken in Thailand.
Update 2 (1/19/05): This picture actually shows a harbor view of Antofagosta, Chile (as seen in the thumbnail to the right). The large wave has obviously been photoshopped in.
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Categories: Photos/Videos Posted by Alex on Tue Jan 04, 2005 |
Comments (47) |
| More from the Hoax Museum Archives: | |||
That's not even close to being real.
Posted by brian on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 01:23 PM
Shouldn't the water be brown, anyways?
Posted by aw on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 01:48 PM
It does look pretty fakey.
Posted by davetolomy on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 01:50 PM
Looks fake.
Posted by Maegan in Tampa, FL - USA on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 02:24 PM
Madonna's plastic surgeon does better work than that.
Posted by Craig on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 02:52 PM
Actually the wave looks like one of the waves from "The Perfect Storm". Or maybe it was: "The Day After TOmmorow"
Posted by davetolomy on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 02:52 PM
I don't see anything that looks like that area in the photo gallery at the Phuket Gazette: http://www.phuket-photos.com/phuket-tidal-wave.htm?ref=2005150557
Maybe someone with more time than I can look through them all and find out.
And I should have said Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon does better work....drat
Posted by Craig on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 02:57 PM
Maybe someone with more time than I can look through them all and find out.
And I should have said Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon does better work....drat
It looks a little like downtown Honolulu:
Posted by Alex in San Diego on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 03:15 PM
Posted by Maegan in Tampa, FL - USA on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 03:33 PM
Uhoh, Alex...I think I skewed the page...
Posted by Maegan in Tampa, FL - USA on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 03:34 PM
...and it doesn't even link to where I needed it to go.
Posted by Maegan in Tampa, FL - USA on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 03:35 PM
Posted by Maegan in Tampa, FL - USA on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 03:36 PM
I fixed it.
Posted by Alex in San Diego on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 03:49 PM
cant be thailand as cars are driving on the left
and they like us brits drive on the right
Posted by collin in uk on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 04:33 PM
and they like us brits drive on the right
Isn't it the other way around? We americans drive on the right. You brits drive on the left? Anyway, that's a good catch. Pretty much proves that it's not a photo of a Thailand Tsunami.
Posted by Alex in San Diego on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 04:55 PM
found this to be sure...definately not thailand:
http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/driving on the left.htm#leftdriving
Posted by David on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 06:42 PM
http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/driving on the left.htm#leftdriving
Japan drives on the left, like Britain and Ireland. I don't know about Thailand.
Of course, the image could have somehow gotten flopped (reversed horizontally).
Posted by Big Gary C in Dallas, Texas on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 06:43 PM
Of course, the image could have somehow gotten flopped (reversed horizontally).
Well, I checked with my colleague who used to live in Thailand and is married to a Thai woman, and he confirmed that drivers in Thailand go on the left side of the road (like in Britain or Japan; the opposite of the U.S. and most other countries). So the photo either is not from Thailand or it's been tweaked somehow.
Posted by Big Gary C in Dallas, Texas on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 07:44 PM
The wording on the caption is suspicious. It's almost as if they refer to Phuket as a city and not an island mentioning "downtown Phuket" If the caption ain't right I wouldn't trust the source of the picture is either.
Posted by sbnature in sb ca on Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 09:11 PM
Obvious fake - why belabor it? But if so, why did I post this comment? Maybe some Zen is needed.
Posted by stork in the spiracles of space on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 12:05 AM
That wave looks like photoshop. The water would be brown anyways...that's badly done.
Posted by Liz in Australia on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 04:03 AM
I heard there wasn't any big wave. Water just rose very fast.
Posted by Loxx on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 12:03 PM
I'm also bummed that Phuket isn't pronounced the way I thought it was. I always wanted for my first born to be born there, so in class, when the teacher asks where everyone was born, my kid could proudly say...
Posted by Craig on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 12:09 PM
ifilm.com has good footage of waves breaking onto the beach and into some Phuket hotels. The waves shown are nice size, but only Sunset Beach big.
Posted by sbnature in sb ca on Wed Jan 05, 2005 at 08:09 PM
To summarize:
1. It's fake.
2. It's badly done.
3. I'm pretty sure they took that wave from Big Wednesday...
Posted by Andr̀© in Port Elizabeth, South Africa on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 04:34 AM
1. It's fake.
2. It's badly done.
3. I'm pretty sure they took that wave from Big Wednesday...
That looks nothing like Phuket. Nice try though. 
Posted by Jesi Brewster in Palm Springs on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 02:28 PM
Snopes has determined this photo to be false, and gives good reasons to back it up.
http://snopes.com/photos/natural/tsunami2.asp
Posted by Tornado on Fri Jan 07, 2005 at 03:00 AM
http://snopes.com/photos/natural/tsunami2.asp
Well, those are all the same reasons already stated by people here.
Posted by Alex in San Diego on Fri Jan 07, 2005 at 03:12 AM
I use stories from here and snopes on my messege board. Looks like another story I can put up.
Posted by Dany in Texas on Fri Jan 07, 2005 at 04:12 PM
I actually just received this email from my sister, who works for a school district. The email had been forwarded to two groups of people previous to my receiving this, but get this--the original guy that sent out the email had claimed that his sister took the picture herself while she was relaxing at a B&B a week before the tsunami hit. O_o So I copied everyone who had received the email all the way back to the original sender, and I sent them all the link to this page and Snopes.
I bet that guy feels like an idiot now
Posted by Sarah in Dallas on Fri Jan 07, 2005 at 05:41 PM
I bet that guy feels like an idiot now