Old Videos Peddled as Recent Visuals From Earthquakes in Turkey and Syria

Both these clips are old and unrelated to the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

Fact-Check | These videos are old and unrelated to the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A set of two videos – one of which shows people lying low on the streets as things start moving and the other shows things coming crashing down in a departmental store – is going viral on the internet.

What is the claim?: It is being linked to the recent earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria. The caption carries hashtags such as #turkearthquake, #turkey.

The quakes have reportedly resulted in the death of more than 21,000 people.

An archive of the post can be seen here. 

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

At the time of writing this report, the video had garnered around 35,000 views on Facebook.

Where are these videos from?: Both these videos are old and unrelated to the recent earthquakes.

• The first video dates back to April 2015 and is from Nepal.

• The second one could be traced back to at least 2018 and reportedly shows an earthquake in a supermarket in Trinidad and Tobago.

VIDEO 1

The first clip shows vehicles suddenly stopping and several people lying down on the road as everything starts shaking around them.

The video also showed people running for their safety.

(Source: Viral video/Altered by The Quint)

• At first, we noticed a watermark on the extreme top-right corner of the footage, which mentioned the date as 25 April 2015.

The footage shows 25 April 2015 as the date.

(Source: Viral video/Altered by The Quint)

• Taking this forward, we performed a keyword search on YouTube and came across the longer version of the same video uploaded on a channel called 'Kantipur TV HD,' a private television channel in Nepal, in May 2015.

• The video was titled, "CCTV footage of Thapathali during Earthquake on 25 April 2015."

The video was uploaded on 19 May 2015.

(Source: YouTube/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

• At around one-minute mark, we saw the words 'Lagankhel' and 'Jawalakhel' written in Hindi on one of the vehicles.

• The aforementioned words are places located in Nepal's Lalitpur.

The words could be seen written on the rear end of the vehicle.

(Source: YouTube/Screenshot)

VIDEO 2

The second clip shows items violently crashing down and one of the people seen in the video running away from the supermarket.

It showed objects falling down in a supermarket.

(Source: Viral video/Altered by The Quint)

A simple reverse image search led us to several old posts on Facebook, which dated back to August 2018 and carried the same video.

• The caption of the post mentioned that the video was recorded during an earthquake as customers were shopping at West Bees Supermarket, Diego Martin, Trinidad and Tobago.

Conclusion: Both the clips are old and unrelated to the recent earthquakes that shook Turkey and Syria.

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