Old Clip From Indonesia Viral as Impact of Recent Earthquake in Papua New Guinea

This video dates back to 2018 and shows an earthquake in Palu city in the Central Sulawesi province of Indonesia.

Fact-check: An old video from Indonesia is going viral as a recent video showing destruction caused by an earthquake in Papua New Guinea.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video showing massive cracks in a road is going viral on social media, claiming that it shows the impact of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that hit Papua New Guinea on Monday, 3 April.

Who shared it?: Along with several social media users, the claim was also shared by Harish Deshmukh, a journalist with Zee News Bihar.

An archive can be seen here. 

(Source: Twitter/ Screenshot)

An archive can be seen here.

(Source: Twitter/ Screenshot)

(Archive of a similar claim can be seen here and here.)

This video was viral on Facebook with the same claim in 2022.

Where is the video from?: The video dates back to 2018 and shows the destruction caused due to an earthquake in Palu city, Central Sulawesi province of Indonesia.

How did we find out the truth?: We broke down the video into multiple keyframes using InVID WeVerify and performed a reverse image search on some of them.

• This led us to a video uploaded by stock images company Getty Images on 10 October 2018.

• The viral video can be seen from 0:04 to 0:26 timestamp in this longer version.

• The description of the video stated that this footage shows the moment of the earthquake from 28 September 2018, and it was recorded in Palu city, Central Sulawesi province of Indonesia.

• It also adds that a 7.4-magnitude earthquake had struck Sulawesi Island, which triggered a tsunami in Donggala and Palu cities.

The video dates back to 2018.

(Source: Getty Images/ Screenshot)

About the earthquake and tsunami that hit Indonesia in 2018: Indonesia was hit by several earthquakes on 28 September and 29 September 2018.

• The strongest earthquake was recorded at a magnitude of 7.5, with its epicentre in the mountainous Donggala Regency, Central Sulawesi.

• This also triggered a tsunami that hit land at a speed of 800 kilometres per hour with waves that were up to 6 metres.

Conclusion: An old video from Indonesia is going viral as a recent video showing the destruction caused by an earthquake in Papua New Guinea.

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