Fact-Check: Old Video From Japan Shared as 'Building Collapse in Turkey'

Fact-Check |This video is old and unrelated to the recent earthquake in Turkey.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video, which shows the front portion of a multi-storey building collapsing, is going viral on social media with a claim that it shows a building in Turkey after the recent earthquakes.

An archive of the post can be seen here.

The video has garnered more than 1,30,000 views at the time of writing this story. (More archives to similar claims can be found here and here.)

What is the truth?: Neither the video is recent nor is it from Syria or Turkey. The video dates back to April 2016 and is from Japan's Tama.

How did we find out?: We extracted several keyframes of the video using a Google Chrome extension, InVID, and performed a reverse image search on them.

• This led us to the same video uploaded on Facebook on 18 April 2016.

The caption of the video mentioned that it is from Japan.

• Taking this forward, we performed a keyword search and came across a report published by the Japanese edition of Huffington Post on 18 April 2016.

• It mentioned that on 17 April 2016, panels surrounding a building near Seiseki-Sakuragaoka Station in Japan's Tama were knocked down due to strong winds.

• The report carried tweets which showed visuals of this building.

The report was published on 18 April 2016.

• Further, we also found a similar report published on a different website named 'Sora News 24'.

What did we find out while geolocating?: Taking visuals from the viral video as reference, we tried geolocating the place on Google Maps.

• While we did not find the exact same visuals, we found some similarities when we compared the buildings as seen in the viral clip.

A comparison clearly highlights some similarities.

What happened in Turkey?: A 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit parts of Turkey on Syria on 6 February. This was followed by a swarm of aftershocks and earthquakes.

• This has resulted in the death of more than 7,800 people, as per reports.

• Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces.

Conclusion: It is clear that a seven-year-old video from Japan is being shared in the aftermath of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

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