Old visuals falsely linked to deadly Philippine earthquakes
- Published on October 16, 2025 at 09:30
- Updated on October 16, 2025 at 11:30
- 4 min read
- By Jan Cuyco, Lucille SODIPE, AFP Philippines
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Two powerful earthquakes struck the southern Philippine island of Mindanao on October 10, 2025 and killed eight people, but widely shared visuals supposedly depicting the disaster are unrelated. A video of panicked people inside a shop was in fact filmed in Myanmar, while photos of destroyed buildings show the aftermath of a quake and a typhoon that hit the Philippines in 2013.
A clip of people huddling inside a beauty salon during a powerful quake has been viewed more than 200,000 times since it was shared on Facebook on October 10.
"Magnitude 7.6 Earthquake Jolts Davao Oriental," says the overlaid sticker text, referring to a province in Mindanao.
Powerful earthquakes struck off the southern Philippines on October 10, killing at least eight people and triggering tsunami warnings (archived link).
The biggest, with a magnitude of 7.4, hit about 20 kilometres (12 miles) off Manay town in the Mindanao region just before 10 am (0100 GMT), according to the United States Geological Survey.
An aftershock with a magnitude of 6.7 rocked the same area almost 10 hours later, one of scores that followed the morning quake.
Officials described damage to roads, bridges, schools and other public infrastructure as "minimal" but have yet to determine how many people lost their homes (archived link).
Another Facebook post shared on the same day purports to show three buildings destroyed in Davao.
"JUST NOW! Pray for Davao. 7.6 magnitude at 9:45 am Oct/10/2025," says the caption.
Other social media users -- and several news outlets including Anadolu Agency, Daily Mail, Daily Express US, Bilyonaryo News Channel and DZRH -- also reshared the purported visuals.
But a combination of reverse image and keyword searches on Google found them unrelated to the recent quakes.
Myanmar tremor
The clip of the salon was published by video agency Newsflare on March 28, 2025 (archived link).
"CCTV footage shows the tremors rocking the building, causing beauty products to spill on the floor of the shop, in Mandalay on March 28," says the video's description.
The magnitude-7.7 tremor on March 28, 2025 was the strongest with an epicentre on Myanmar's land mass since 1912, the United States Geological Survey reported, killing nearly 3,800 according to an official toll (archived link).
Devastation centred on the second most populous city of Mandalay where apartments, tea shops, hotels and religious institutes were razed or heavily damaged.
Newsflare's caption credited the clip to Burmese salon owner May Thu Soe Wai. A check on her TikTok profile shows she shared the footage on March 31, 2025 (archived link).
Its Burmese-language caption says: "Terrifying, a day I will never forget".
The original video also shows the date stamp on the security footage as "03-28-2025".
She later filmed the aftermath of the quake inside the May Pan Chi salon in Pyinmana city, Mandalay (archived here and here).
Bohol disaster
The photo of a damaged church was traced to a post on Pinterest by user Margaret Lacson. A review of the post's source code indicates it was published August 4, 2014 (archived link).
In October 2013, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Bohol island in the central Philippines, killing more than 200 people and severely damaging old churches (archived link).
Lacson, who was executive director of the Bohol Restoration Group, confirmed with AFP she took the photo of the centuries-old Our Lady of Light Parish in Loon, Bohol after the October 2013 earthquake.
The Bohol Restoration Group is a volunteer Filipino-American organisation that aimed to preserve cultural heritage sites damaged by the disaster (archived link).
Lacson's Pinterest profile also shows other related images of quake-torn historical sites in Bohol (archived link).
Reuters news agency also published a similar photo on the damaged church in Bohol in 2013 (archived link).
Meanwhile, the other picture showing a tilted house corresponds to the 18-second mark of a video uploaded to the Facebook page of Bohol's Tubigon municipality on October 15, 2021 (archived link).
"Remembering the 7.2 Magnitude Bohol Earthquake on October 15, 2013 that shook us but failed to left us broken," the caption partly says.
Local broadcaster GMA Integrated News featured the house in an October 17, 2013 report on the Bohol tremor during its nightly newscast programme State of the Nation (archived link).
Supertyphoon Haiyan
Finally, the image of a damaged house has earlier appeared on the official Pinterest account of nonprofit Habitat for Humanity (archived link). The post's source code reveals it was uploaded November 27, 2013.
"Habitat for Humanity is on the ground in the Philippines assessing damage to the 500,000+ homes that have been damaged or destroyed as a result of Super Typhoon Haiyan," the photo's caption read.
Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever recorded, unleashed winds of up to 315 kilometres (195 miles) an hour and whipped up tsunami-like waves that devastated central islands in the archipelago nation on November 8, 2013 (archived link).
AFP has repeatedly fact-checked misrepresented visuals after disasters.
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