News outlets including CNBC Awaaz and Zee Rajasthan News have shared the video of a building collapsing in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and falsely linked it to the recent earthquake in Turkey. BOOM found that the video is of a controlled building demolition, and is not connected to Turkey at all.
On Monday, February 6, 2023, Turkey and Syria were hit with an intense earthquake of 7.8 magnitude, resulting in a death toll of over 17,100 and counting. Distressing visuals of the quake from different regions are going viral online, among which is a video that shows a building collapsing while there is traffic on the road.
The video is being shared with the caption, "God Help #Turkey 🇹🇷 …"
Click here to view the tweet and here for an archive.
CNBC Awaaz also carried the same video with the caption, "#AwaazViralVideo | भूकंप का कहर...."
Click here to view the tweet and here for an archive.
It was also shared by Journalist Vivek Gupta. View here.
Zee Rajasthan News shared it on Facebook with the caption, "Earthquake wreaks havoc in Turkey, multistorey building collapses."
(Original text in Hindi: "तुर्की में भुकम्प का कहर बहुमानजिला इमारत देखते ही देखते हुई जमींदोज"
Click here to view.
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the video is from a building demolition in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and has been falsely linked to the recent earthquake in Turkey.
On checking the replies to the viral video, we found one user who claimed that the video was from Old Makkah Road, Jeddah.
Using this as a clue, we used Arabic keywords and ran a reverse image search of some keyframes from the video. We found the same video uploaded on TikTok by a user on January 16, 2023.
The upload date of the video precedes the date of the earthquake.
Using the caption, we geolocated "Old Makkah Mall Kilo 3" and found that the structure behind the demolished building is similar to the one in our viral video.
A dashcam video from April 2022 of Old Makkah Road shared by a Twitter user confirms the location of the building too.
Here is a side by side comparison of the demolished building's visual in the dashcam video and the viral video.
Jeddah saw widespread demolitions across the city between October 2021 and May 2022. According to Dawn, Saudi Arabian authorities received severe backlash during this period for evicting people from their homes and destroying properties across 4,000 square kilometres. The demolitions were carried out to accelerate a multi-billion dollar plan to further tourism and development.
BOOM was not able to ascertain exactly when this video was shot, but its oldest version was seen on TikTok in January 2023, predating the earthquake in Syria and Turkey, which struck in February.
