Video shows eruption of Indonesia's Mount Sinabung in 2018, not 'Mount Merapi in 2023'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on April 5, 2023 at 09:48
- 4 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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"Oh my God... Saturday, March 11, 2023. At 12:12 Mount Merapi erupted. Hope the people nearby are safe and sound ... Aameen," reads the Indonesian-language tweet posted on March 11, 2023.
The 30-second video -- viewed more than 1,600 times -- shows a volcano spewing a thick plume of gray smoke and ash.
It was posted hours after Mount Merapi on Indonesia's Java island erupted on March 11, 2023, spewing ash that blanketed nearby villages.
The video has racked up more than 1.6 million views after it was shared alongside a similar claim on Twitter here, on Facebook here and here, on YouTube here, and TikTok here and here.
Similar posts also circulated in English globally, including in Singapore, India, Australia, Nigeria and the United States.
The video appeared with a similar false claim in Malay, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese, garnering more than five million views.
Mount Sinabung eruption
A reverse image search of the video's keyframes using verification tool InVID-WeVerify found this slightly longer footage.
It was posted by Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the late spokesman of Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency, on his official Twitter account on February 19, 2018.
"The massive eruption of Mount Sinabung," he tweeted in Indonesian. "The height of the column reached 5 km along with pyroclastic flows reaching 4.9 km.
"Rumbling sounds. This was the first time an eruption was accompanied by rumbling sounds since 2014-2018. There are no casualties. All residents in the red zone have long been evacuated."
Dahsyatnya letusan Gunung Sinabung. Tinggi kolom hingga 5 km disertai luncuran awan panas hingga 4,9 km. Suara bergemuruh. Baru kali ini letusan disertai suara gemuruh sejak 2014-2018. Tidak ada korban jiwa. Semua penduduk di zona merah sudah lama diungsikan. #volcano#Sinabungpic.twitter.com/P2RRfMcm08
— Sutopo Purwo Nugroho (@Sutopo_PN) February 19, 2018
On the same day, AFP reported on the eruption of Mount Sinabung, an active volcano on Indonesia's Sumatra island.
Armen Putra, the head of the Mount Sinabung monitoring post, under the Indonesian Centre for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG), told AFP that the clip shows "the Sinabung eruption in 2018."
On February 19, 2018, Putra also posted two videos of Mount Sinabung's eruption on his Facebook account.
Both clips, taken from different angles, show a smoke column that corresponds with the video shared in the false posts.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (top left), the genuine video posted by Sutopo (top right) and one of the Sinabung eruption videos posted by Putra (bottom).
On on March 29, 2023, Putra also told AFP that based on the physical land features, the video shared in the false posts was taken on a street in Naman Teran district, about six kilometres (3.7 miles) from Sinabung's summit.
Google Street View imagery directly corresponds with landmarks seen in the video.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false posts (left) and Google Street View imagery (right):
Indonesia, which sits on a belt of high volcanic and seismic activity known as the "Ring of Fire", has nearly 130 active volcanoes.
Volcanic eruptions in the Southeast Asian country frequently spark false claims, as debunked by AFP here, here, here and here.
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