The American Red Cross has patched up a mistake it made Monday.
The organization used Twitter to share an image comparing the size of Typhoon Haiyan, a storm that killed an estimated 10,000 people in the Philippines over the weekend, to the continental United States, in which the typhoon dwarfed the nation. The tweet (embedded below) read, "A storm the size of typhoon Haiyan would cover nearly the entire continental U.S."
Twitter users retweeted the shocking image more than 700 times before the Red Cross issued a correction and apology several hours later.
Niki Clark, a Red Cross senior associate in international communications, issued the correction on the organization's blog.
Earlier today, we posted a map of Typhoon Haiyan comparing the size of the storm to geography of the United States. In the process of making the rest of our maps for our operations in the Philippines, we made a mistake with this one and it was not to scale. We always strive to provide the most accurate information possible and we missed the mark with this one-literally. We would like to apologize for this mistake and thank the people who kindly pointed this out to us.
Even before the Red Cross issued its correction, Nate Cohn of The New Republic debunked the erroneous photo. While Haiyan was extremely large, Cohn wrote, "it was not even close to the size of the United States."
People sharing viral fake photos of extreme weather is not a new social media phenomenon. During Hurricane Sandy in particular, a number of hyperbolic images made the rounds.
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