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
A 16-second video purportedly showing the impact of an earthquake that struck Bajhang district on October 3 is going viral on TikTok. An earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale rocked Nepal’s western Bajhang district on Tuesday, sending tremors up to India’s capital News Delhi.
Fact
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, we took several keyframes from the viral video and conducted reverse searches on them. But the results didn’t yield any relevant results.
Then, we closely observed the video and noticed the footage showed landslides apparently caused by an earthquake. So, we conducted a search on YouTube by using relevant keywords such as landslide triggered by earthquake in Nepal and found a video, dated May 14 2015, published on YouTube channel Sagar Bhattarai. On checking the video captured live in Rasuwa Gadhi when a 7.4-magnitude earthquake jolted Nepal on May 12, 2015, we found that the video frames exactly matched the viral video.
Further, we found another video, dated May 13 2015, of a massive landslide captured in Dhunche, near Rasuwa Gadhi after a 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit Sindhupalchok district. The video was published on the YouTube Channel of The Hindustan Times.
Thus, our findings clearly show that the viral footage doesn’t show the landslide triggered by the recent earthquake hitting Bajhang district of Nepal.
Result: False
Sources
Sagar Bhattarai/YouTube May 12, 2015
The Hindustan Times/YouTube May 13, 2015
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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.
