Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Video showing impact of 7.6 magnitude earthquake that rocked Japan on January 1.
Fact
Old and unrelated clip of controlled demolition of buildings in China and 2011 Tsunami shared as the impact of January 1 earthquake.
A 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s Noto Peninsula on New Year’s Day, killing scores of people and prompting tsunami warnings for the nine prefectures along the west coast of the country. In the wake of the disaster, many videos allegedly showing the impact of Monday’s earthquake have surfaced on social media. Newschecker investigated two such videos claiming to show the impact of the earthquake.
TikTok user @reajankoirala posted a one-minute-two-second video showing several footage of high rise buildings collapsing. Text superimposed on the video reads, “A 7.6-magnitude earthquake has struck Japan. Japan earthquake 2024. Breaking News.”
The video posted on January 1 has garnered 19.1k likes, 3767 users have shared it and 875 people have commented on it until the time of publishing this article.The archived version of the TikTok can be seen here.
Another TikTok user @funny._.yolo posted a video showing vehicles being swept away by a torrent of flood. The video also shows a clip of waves on road pavement. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Japan earthquake 2024.”
The video posted on January 2 has garnered 63.4k likes, 13.9k users have shared it and 2196 users have commented until the last count. The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found both the claims to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the first video, Newschecker closely observed the video and noticed that the video showed different footage of high-rise buildings collapsing. We, then, split the video into several key frames and conducted reverse searches on them. A reverse search on the first keyframe led us to an article, dated February 23, 2023, published on News18 online carrying images matching the clip used in the viral video. On checking the article, we found that the article was about a viral video showing controlled demolition of unfinished buildings in China’s Kunming Province in August, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjz1f7P_oPoThe article cited Vice online for its report.
Taking a cue from the article, we ran a search on Google by using relevant keywords and found a video, dated 19 September, 2021, published on a YouTube channel named Archistudent. The video frames from 0.10-minute onwards exactly matched the first viral video. Thus, our findings clearly showed that the first viral video is actually from 2021 showing controlled demolition of buildings in southwestern city of Kunming.
Further, to investigate the truth behind the second viral video, we took several key frames from the video and conducted a reverse search on them. A reverse search on the first frame led us to an article, dated March 1 2012, published on Rediff.com online about the devastating Tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011. The article carried an image whose frames resembled the first footage of the viral video.
We dug further and found a video, dated August 11, 2016, published on the YouTube channel named Purdue Engineering. On checking the video about a history of tsunamis along the Pacific coast of Japan’s Tohoku region, we found the frame of the video clip from 0.9-minute onwards exactly matched the first clip of the viral video.
Then we conducted a reverse search on another frame from the viral video that pointed us to cracks formed on road pavement when an earthquake of 7.6 magnitude struck Japan.
Thus, our findings clearly showed that the second video was created by combining old footage of the Tsunami from 2011 and another footage from January 1, 2024.
Conclusion
Thus, we can conclude that old and unrelated clips of high-rise buildings being demolished in China and old footage of the Tsunami hitting Japan in 2011 are being passed off claiming to show the devastation caused by the January 1 earthquake in Japan.
Result: False
Sources
News18.com, February 23, 2023
Archistudent/Youtube, Sept 19, 2021
Purdue Engineering /YouTube, August 11, 2016
Rediff , March 12, 2012
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
