In the wake of the 5 August 2025 Uttarakhand flash flood disaster, a video (here and here) showing muddy water rapidly surging through a canal is being shared on social media, with captions claiming the visuals show the recent flash floods in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district (the floods were in Uttarakashi district). We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Visuals of the flash flood occurred in Uttarakhand on 5 August 2025.
Fact: The video actually depicts a flash flood in Bardonecchia, Italy, not Uttarakhand. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
To verify the claim, we performed a reverse-image search on a few keyframes from the video. The search led us to an older upload of this video on the ‘The Sun’s’ YouTube channel and website (here and here).
Uploaded on 1 July 2025, the footage is part of a compilation that shows a devastating flood in Bardonecchia, Italy. The description of this video highlights that ‘At least one person has been killed in the fierce floods caused by heavy rains, the authorities announced, as extreme weather events become more frequent.’ Flooding has occurred in the Frejus River.
Apart from this, we also found the viral footage in videos posted (here and here) by various media organisations on social media describing it as the visuals of the flooding that occurred in Bardonecchia, Italy.
Furthermore, we found media reports (here, here, here, and here) from 30 June 2025 and 1 July 2025 on this flooding incident, reportedly caused due to torrential rains. According to these reports, the person who lost his life due to these floods is Franco Chiaffrino, a 70-year-old fruit seller.
To sum up, the viral clip of gushing floodwater is from a flood in Bardonecchia, Italy, not Uttarakhand.
