Claim
Aerial footage depicting extensive fissures and large cracks in the Earth’s surface is being associated with recent earthquakes in Turkey. Claims suggest that a 300-kilometer-long fracture in the Earth’s crust resulted from these powerful earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, based on an eight-second video.
Fact
The video is actually old aerial footage from China’s Shanxi province and has no connection to the recent earthquakes in Turkey.
Verification
Verification and methodology involved using the InVID Google Chrome extension to break down the video into keyframes. These keyframes were then subjected to reverse-image searches across multiple search engines. The results identified a video posted on Instagram on December 6, 2021.
We also discovered several videos uploaded on YouTube in November 2022.
The videos had titles and descriptions in Chinese. Translations of the captions revealed that these visuals were from Pinglu County in China.
“The Great Ravine in Pinglu County” was one of the translated video headlines, posing questions about a chasm roughly 10 kilometers long that splits the entire plain. Another translated description stated, “It’s incredible! Have you ever seen hundreds of millions of years of crustal changes divide the plain into two? In Pinglu County, Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, there is such a gully that separates the houses on both sides. Looking down from the sky, the gully stretches continuously and can’t be seen at a glance.”
This confirms that the footage is old and unrelated to the Turkey earthquake. Furthermore, a search on Google Earth for Pinglu County reveals deep fissures in the earth’s surface, confirming its Chinese origin.
While credible news reports suggest that drone footage of the Turkey earthquake shows fissures slicing through the land, this viral video does not depict such scenes.
Conclusion
Fake-News-Busters has determined that an old video from China, depicting massive cracks in the earth’s crust, is being incorrectly linked to the recent Turkey earthquake.
