An old video showing several cracks on the surface of the earth has been shared by several users as a footage from the earthquake in Turkey. BOOM found that the video is from China's Pinglu County and is unrelated to the Turkey earthquake.
On February 6, 2023, Turkey and Syria were hit with an intense 7.8-magnitude earthquake, and the countries are still grappling from its devastating effects. Over 45,000 lives have been lost in this disaster and several videos have gone viral from the region.
Amid this, the video showing several cracks in the earth's surface is also being shared with the caption, "Turkey Syria Earthquake Caused 300 km Long Crack in Earth’s Crust #turkeyearthquake2023 #earthquake #TurkeySyriaEarthquake2023 Turkey-Syria"
Click here to view the tweet and here for an archive.
Click here to view the tweet.
The video is also circulating on Facebook.
Click here to view.
Click here to view.
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the video from China's Pinglu County and not from the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
While going through some of the comments under the viral videos, we found several users pointing out that the video is from China. One user mentioned that it was from the country's Pinglu County.
Click here to view.
Using these hints and some key visuals from the video, we ran a reverse image search on Google and found several videos uploaded on Chinese video sharing platform Douyin.
One of these videos had the caption, "A gap about 20 kilometers long has been drawn on the entire plain of Pinglu County, Yuncheng, Shanxi Province. What kind of force divides it into two? Do you know how it was formed?"
Click here to view.
The upload date of the video is January 16, 2023, which predates the Turkey and Syria earthquakes.
Here is a comparison of the two videos:
Using the new information from the caption, we looked for other videos on YouTube by using some Chinese keywords.
We found a video similar to our viral video uploaded on November 19, 2022.
While this particular video is not from the fissures in Turkey, there have been several cracks in the area because of the earthquake, including a 300-km rupture through the earth's surface. Read here and here. The United States Geological Survey and the Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics have also studied these ruptures.