Old video falsely shared as 2024 quake off Indonesia's Java island

Published on March 30, 2024 at 03:07
3 min read
By AFP Indonesia

Dramatic footage of a street in Indonesia reduced to rubble after a deadly earthquake in 2022 surfaced in social media posts that falsely claimed it showed the aftermath of a tremor that displaced thousands of people in March 2024. An AFP photo taken after the quake that struck West Java province in November 2022 shows the same house and car as the video circulating online.

"Earthquake in Bawean, Gresik, after the Friday prayer today, March 22, 2024," says an Indonesian-language caption of a video posted on YouTube that day.

Bawean is an island in the Java Sea around 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Gresik regency, in Indonesia's East Java province (archived links here and here).

Text on the 13-second video repeats the claim.

The clip, which has more than 15,000 views, shows a house ripped from its foundation and buildings reduced to rubble next to a huge crack in the road.

Screenshot of the false post, taken on March 26, 2024

The video was shared in similar posts on social media platform X, as well as on Facebook, SnackVideo and TikTok, where it garnered more than 220,000 views in total.

A 6.4-magnitude offshore earthquake struck off the northeastern coast of Indonesia's Java island, near Bawean island, on March 22, 2024, the United States Geological Survey said. The tremor was felt in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, and forced residents of Surabaya, the capital of East Java province, to flee their homes.

More than 34,000 people on Bawean were displaced due to the quake and hundreds of aftershocks, Indonesia's state news agency Antara reported (archived link).

However, the video shared online does not show the 2024 quake.

2022 earthquake

The clip shows the aftermath of a 5.6-magnitude tremor that struck the town of Cianjur, in Indonesia's West Java province, on November 21, 2022, killing more than 600 people.

An AFP photo taken the day after the quake shows the house and car seen in the video falsely shared online.

The AFP photo caption reads: "Villagers salvage items from damaged houses following a 5.6-magnitude earthquake that killed at least 162 people, with hundreds injured and others missing in Cianjur on November 22, 2022."

Below is a screenshot of the false video (left) and the AFP photo from 2022 (right), with similarities highlighted by AFP:

Screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the AFP photo from 2022 (right)

AFP also posted the photo on X, formerly Twitter, on November 22, 2022 (archived link).

Indonesia's National Disaster and Mitigation Agency (BNPB) also debunked the false video.

"The narrative in the video is a HOAX because the video above is footage of the impact of the 2022 Cianjur earthquake," it wrote on X on March 22, 2024, alongside the falsely shared clip (archived link).

Screenshot of post from BNPB, taken on March 27, 2024

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