Does a video on TikTok show the aftermath of a New Year's day tsunami that caused severe damage to a town on Japan's Noto Peninsula? No, that's not true: The video of damage shown in the post is from tsunami damage caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. It's unrelated to the Noto earthquake that occurred on New Year's Day 2024.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on January 3, 2024, with a caption that read:
JAPAN FIRST TSUNAMI 2024
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jan 9 09:25:09 2024 UTC)
A Google Lens reverse image search (archived here) shows the video shown in the post was uploaded to TikTok on October 25, 2023, before the Noto earthquake on January 1, 2024.
Following the Noto earthquake, Japan's Meteorological Agency issued the first major tsunami warning since the Great East Japan Earthquake, warning that a tsunami of over 1.2 meters (4 feet) was observed (archived here) at Wajima Port in Ishikawa Prefecture.γ
A screenshot taken from a newscast on Japan's TBS YouTube channel on January 8, 2024 (archived here) shows that Suzu town, in Ishikawa prefecture, might have been hit by a tsunami wave up to 4.6 meters (15 feet) high. However, as the drone video shows in the screenshot, structures including homes along the coast remain standing.
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jan 9 11:25:09 2024 UTC)
According to Japan Science and Technology Agency (archived here), the main cause of death from the event on January 1, 2024, was not drowning due to the tsunami, but compression death due to collapsed buildings caused by the earthquake.
