Weeks-old CCTV footage from Philippines misrepresented as Venezuela earthquake

Published on July 1, 2026 at 07:12
2 min read
By Pasika KHERNAMNUOY, AFP Thailand

Rare back-to-back earthquakes struck west of Venezuela's capital on June 24, reducing entire neighbourhoods to rubble and trapping family members beneath the debris, but an old CCTV video showing an elderly woman falling to the floor as a tremor shakes her home does not show the disaster. The user who first posted the footage confirmed to AFP that it was recorded during a powerful earthquake that struck the southern Philippines on June 8.

"So terrifying. It all happened so fast. And the woman couldn't move by herself," reads the Thai-language caption of an X video published on June 25, alongside the hashtags "earthquake" and "Venezuela".

The clip shows people talking inside a house before the ground shakes, throwing an elderly woman to the floor and scattering furniture across the room.

Screenshot of the false post taken on June 29, 2026, with a red X added by AFP

The video was shared alongside similar claims on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X in several languages after Venezuela was struck by devastating twin tremors on June 24 (archived link).

The 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes collapsed whole residential complexes. The death toll rose to nearly 2,000 as tens of thousands remain unaccounted for in one of the worst earthquake disasters in Latin American history (archived link).

Comments indicate some users believed the claim.

"I'm heartbroken. It felt so awful when the old lady turned to see everyone running away, leaving her alone. I'm glad the woman came back to help her," reads one comment.

Another says: "I was worried if anyone would come back to help. I kept worrying that something might fall on the elderly woman."

But the clip circulated weeks before the deadly Venezuela quake.

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to a higher-quality and longer version of the same CCTV footage published in a Facebook post on June 12, 2026 (archived link).

The clip is timestamped "2026-06-08 07:37:27," and its caption in part reads: "I'm sorry, grandma. I was at the FRC at the time. If I had been there, I would have taken you outside right away."

Screenshot comparison of the false post (L) and the Facebook video posted on June 12

Jonard Pacres Abrasado, the user who uploaded the original video, told AFP on June 29 that the clip was taken in Sarangani Province at the southern tip of the Philippines' Mindanao island on June 8.

"I was giving a heads-up to the students on the first day of class before the earthquake happened," Jonard said, adding later that his mother -- whom he referred to in the post as his child's grandmother -- was doing "okay" (archived link).

People seen in the video can also be heard speaking in Visayan, a Philippine language spoken in the southern part of the Philippines, with one of them telling the old woman to move fast before aftershocks hit.

The footage also circulated in media reports -- including the SCMP and local radio station 90.7 Brigada News FM Cebu -- about a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck off the southern Philippines on June 8, 2026 (archived here and here).

The powerful tremor just off the coast of Mindanao on June 8 has killed 81 people, injured more than 1,300 and left 31 missing, according to the country's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (archived link).

AFP has previously debunked posts that misrepresented outdated footage from Philippines quakes.

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