An old visual of satellite imageries has been widely shared on social media platforms misleadingly claiming that it shows recent damage happened in Indonesia after the country faced a strong earthquake in its West Java province.
BOOM found the video to be from 2018 and shows soil liquefaction in Indonesia's Palu city following an earthquake in the country's Central Sulawesi province.
Indonesia is now struggling to get back to its normal routine after a powerful earthquake shook the Southeast Asian country. The incident took place on November 21, 2022, in its West Java province leaving thousands of buildings destroyed and taking lives of over 200 people. The old video is being shared linking to the recent incident happened in Indonesia.
The video is captioned as, "Satellite video of the Indonesian earthquake. SCARY! The entire land mass is getting shifted!! Unbelievable!!"
Click here to view the post.
BOOM also received the video on its WhatsApp tipline number (77009 06588) for verification.
Fact Check
BOOM performed a reverse image search on one of the keyframes from the viral video and found a The Washington Post article published on October 2, 2018, reporting about an earthquake happened in Indonesia at that time.
The picture along with other image is captioned as, "Satellite images show the Petobo neighborhood of Palu on Aug. 17, before an earthquake, left, and on Oct. 1, after the earthquake and subsequent tsunami."
The report states, "Five days after a quake and a tsunami hit the Indonesian city of Palu, the death toll continued to rise on Tuesday as authorities said that more than 1,230 people had died. At least 60,000 people have fled the area, and fuel as well as food is in short supply, according to aid agencies."
It further adds, "The catastrophic damage inside the city becomes visible in close-ups that show the tsunami's muddy remnants along vast stretches of residential areas that housed 330,000 residents."
Taking a cue, we searched for "Indonesia earthquake satellite timelapse 2018" on YouTube and found the same video was uploaded by Indonesian news outlet KOMPASTV on October 6, 2018.
The description in Indonesian with the video translates to, "After the earthquake that rocked Palu and Donggala, a phenomenon of soil liquefaction occurred in the Petobo housing complex, Central Sulawesi. In the video, one can clearly see how the residents' settlements are being dragged away by the mud as a result of liquefaction. Liquefaction is a change in solid soil into liquid. This phenomenon usually occurs after an earthquake."
We also found on-ground visuals of the incident on The New York Times' official YouTube channel.