Indonesian village turns ‘red’ after flooding

A small Indonesian town briefly turned red after a dye factory was flooded Saturday causing the streets to flow with blood-red water.

Pictures of motorcyclists zipping through the deluge just south of Central Java’s Pekalongan city soon flooded social media, where some users worried about them being shared out of context, Reuters reported.

“I am so afraid if this photo gets into the bad hands of hoax spreaders,” Twitter user Ayah E Arek-Arek wrote. “Fear mongering narratives about signs that it is the end of the world, bloody rain etc.”

The town is a traditional producer of batik, a traditional technique using wax-resistant dying, and as others pointed out online, it’s not uncommon for flood waters to come in hues of green and purple too.