Fact Check: Video of a Christian Pastor trying to stop Tsunami with prayers is fake. Here is the truth…

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A Facebook page called Sudarshanam has recently shared a video along with a caption in Malayalam saying, “Miracle! A Christian Pastor stops Tsunami by praying. The world is stunned.”  The caption is a sarcastic jibe at the person in the video who seems to be standing near a very large water body. The turbulent waves can be seen in the background as the person turns around, then realizes that the waves might be too strong to drown him, and hence starts running away for safety. The cameraman can be heard screaming Corre Richard, Corre that translates to Run Richard, Run in Spanish and Portuguese. Apart from this information, no other specific information has been provided in the post about the incident. Did really a Christian Pastor tried to stop tides and after realizing that he has failed, had to run for safety? Let’s find out the true story about the video.

Our Fact Check

In order to know more about the video and to find out the actual story behind the video, we used In-Vid tool to break the video into several key frames. Following this, we used one of the key frames thus separated with the help of In-Vid for reverse image search. The results of the reverse image search can be seen in the screenshot given below:

Though the reverse image search did not yield anything substantial but by taking a glance at the results, we found out a name Richard Rasmussen. We searched about Richard Rasbussen and found out that he is a Brazilian biologist and a Wild Life Presenter. The fact can be verified from his social media accounts. The screenshot of his Instagram account is given below:

Richard’s Insta Bio in Portuguese translates as such, “ Come and travel with me…Biologist, adventurer and wildlife presenter.” The various social media accounts of Richard can be visited by clicking on the following links:

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So, it is clear that Richard is not a pastor as claimed in the post. We then tried to find out when was this video taken and what is the actual story behind this video. When we Googled Richard Rasmussen running away from tide, we got few articles which provide details about the entire incident. To read the articles, please click on the following links:

Adventure Reports Network	Archived Link
Dailymail.co.uk	Archived Link

As per the reports, Richard went to the banks of Amazon river in Brazil and was trying to explain the natural phenomena of Tidal Bore. Tidal Bore is a natural phenomenon in which tides are formed on the surface of a river just like a sea or ocean. This happens when a large amount of water moves from a broad bay into a narrow funnel like area. It happens when the tidal range, that is the difference between high tide and low tide, is more than 6ft. The phenomenon of Tidal bore has been described in depth in the video given below.

So, while explaining Tidal bore to his viewers, Richard realized that he might be in danger due to the high tides rising from the river and hence started running for his safety along with the cameraman. The incident took place 3 years back in 2016. So, nor Richard is a pastor and neither he was trying to stop tides created in the Amazon River or a Tsunami!

Conclusion

The claim made by the sarcastic post is false. The man in the video is a wild life presenter Richard Rasmussen and he is not a Christian pastor trying to stop the tides by praying.