Video of hillside fire misrepresented online as 'China Eastern Airlines plane crash site'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on March 24, 2022 at 11:32
- Updated on March 25, 2022 at 02:30
- 3 min read
- By AFP Hong Kong
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“The crash site of the China Eastern Airlines plane,” reads this tweet written in simplified Chinese-language on March 21, 2022.
It has been viewed more than 8,000 times.
The 51-second video shows smoke billowing from a fire on a hillside.
Several people can be heard speaking in the background.
The video circulated online as aviation authorities in China tried to determine why a China Eastern Boeing 737-800 nosedived into a mountainside near Wuzhou in southern China's Guangxi region on March 21.
A black box from the crashed jet was recovered on March 23, but no survivors were found as investigators scoured the rugged terrain for clues.
The video was also shared alongside a similar claim on Twitter here; as well as on Facebook; Weibo, US social media site Gettr, and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
The video was also included in reports by the Chinese news app Jiupai News; Indian newspaper The New Indian Express; Taiwanese broadcaster Sanlih E-Television; and US broadcaster Fox News.
But the video has been shared in a misleading context.
Hillside fire
Keyword searches found this report by Chinese newspaper Modern Express Post that states the video shows a fire near Longyan, a city in Fujian province, some 500 miles (800 kilometres) away from the crash site in Wuzhou.
A government spokesperson for Longyan's Shanghang county told AFP the video shows a hillside fire in a local village on March 20.
“The online video does not show the plane crash incident, it actually shows a hill fire on March 20 from a village in Guanzhuang She Nationality township, Shanghang county," the spokesperson said.
The fire was caused by tomb-sweeping -- a custom of cleaning ancestors' graves that involves burning joss sticks or paper offerings -- according to the government spokesperson.
AFP located a man surnamed Lin, who said he is from a village close to the site of the blaze in Longpai village.
He sent an earlier version of the video along with a screenshot of the clip being shared in a local community WeChat group on March 20.
It can be seen below with the timestamp highlighted in red by AFP:
Below are two screenshot comparisons of the video in the misleading posts (left) and the video shared on WeChat on March 20 (right):
AFP located the village here on Baidu maps. It shows a similar hilly terrain to the area shown in the video.
Lin told AFP that the people heard speaking in the video were using his local Hakka dialect.
According to a transcript he provided to AFP, one of the speakers appears to blame the fire on someone being "careless" while tomb sweeping.
He translated one woman's comments as: "The fire is so strong! That person who went there for tomb sweeping is really a disaster. [They are] so careless [to have caused the fire]!"
AFP debunked other posts here that falsely claimed to show the final moments of the China Eastern Airlines jet.
Correction: This article was updated on March 25 to clarify the man surnamed Lin is from Shanghang county.
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