This Viral Video does NOT Depict a Massive Crack After the Earthquake in Turkey-Syria border region!

As the Turkish and Syrian border regions were still finding it hard to come to terms with the massive damages and loss of lives due to the powerful earthquake that hit the countries several weeks ago, the Turkish border region of Hatay was hit again by two more powerful quakes of 6.4 and 5.8 magnitude, on 20th February.

From misleading images to old and unrelated videos, the spread of misinformation can have serious consequences during times of crisis. Recently, a video has been circulating on social media which claims to depict an enormous crack (fault line) that appeared in Hatay, Turkey, following the recent earthquake.

However, after the investigation, we found that this video is not from Turkey but from Pinglu County in China.

Social Media Claims

The claim that the video was from Turkey was shared on Twitter by an account called "Flash News UA" on February 20, 2023. The tweet included the caption, "Fracture of the earth's crust after an earthquake in the Turkish province of Hatay. Video from social networks." The tweet was accompanied by an 8-second video clip showing a large crack in the ground with buildings in the background.

Source | Archive

The claimed video has over 56K views, with over 200 retweets and 700 likes. Apart from the above tweet, we found the video has also been shared here and here with the same claim.

Fact-Checking

We began our investigation by using the keyframes of the video in the reverse image search feature, which led us to this video on several platforms with different narratives.

Here is an article about the same clip from January 2022 stating that the video depicted the San Andreas fault, a deep crack located in California, USA. However, the geological mapping of the San Andreas fault did not match that of the viral video.

Hence, we did further searches, we found this video was also checked by the news website in France here, which yielded the same video in Douyin, a Chinese video platform. This video was posted in November 2022.

Source | Archive

According to the Chinese text given in the video presentation, the location is cited as a geological fault located near the district of Pinglu in the province of Shanxi in China.

We found another video of the same place posted in April 2022.

Source | Archive

Moreover, according to Pinglu County on Google Earth here, it can be seen that the geographical in this area is exactly like that of the viral video, hence confirming the location of the viral video is in China.

Source | Archive

Moreover, with this comparison, we can clearly see that those two pictures are in the same place, from the position of roads, houses, etc.

However, it is worth noting that earthquakes can sometimes trigger new faults to form or cause existing faults to shift, leading to further seismic activity in the area.

Similarly, after the massive earthquakes in the Turkey – Syrian border region, horrifying scenes of cracks that appeared on the ground went viral on social media. Here is the footage of Hatay Province, Turkey, where an olive grove was split in two after deadly earthquakes, creating a 300-meter-long canyon-like rift that now divides the area.

Source | Archive

Here are other international news reports of the recent huge chasm that appears in Earth’s crust sparked by giant Turkey earthquakes.

Conclusion

The video showing a geological fault with buildings in the background that has been circulating on social media with claims that it is in Hatay, Turkey, after an earthquake is false. It is actually footage from Pinglu County in China.

However, the massive earthquakes that hit the Turkish – Syrian border region have also caused massive cracks in the ground.