|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Claim: A TikTok user posted a series of video footage showing quivering roads and houses, claiming that it is connected to Taiwan’s 7.2 earthquake.
Verdict: False. The videos shared on TikTok are clips of events before the recent Taiwanese earthquake, including buildings demolished by the Chinese government.
Full Text
Taiwan, on Wednesday, Apr. 3, 2024, witnessed a 7.2-magnitude earthquake, which claimed nine lives and injured over 900 people, according to Aljazeera. The earthquake, described as the biggest Taiwan has witnessed in 25 years, shook the foundations of houses and caused landslides in the eastern city of Hualien.
Amidst the unsettling chaos in the East Asian country, a TikTok user, @disaster788, posted a series of video footage showing different environmental unrest occasions.
The video was captioned “Pray for Taiwan. Disaster earthquake today.”
The post has garnered over 88,000 likes, 5,541 comments, 7,940 bookmarks, and 23,000 shares as of Monday, Apr. 8, 2024.
While some other TikTok users mocked the post’s authenticity, some believed it.
“God, please save your children in Taiwan and all over the world. Amen,” Uyualoyv wrote.
“Who is now videoing?” BubuOO7 queried.
Due to the contradictions in the comment section and engagements generated, DUBAWA decided to verify the post.
Verification
DUBAWA conducted a Google Reverse Image Search on some of the scenes from the video and came across the initial sources of the videos.
We discovered that the first set of towers that collapsed were four unfinished high-rise buildings that were demolished in China after ten years of abandonment, as reported by Soha News in May 2018.
DUBAWA traced the second set of collapsed buildings to 15 high-rise residential buildings in Kunming, Yunnan, China. According to China Media Grand Mishmash Network (CMGM), the buildings were demolished after seven years of remaining unfinished.
According to the paper, the buildings were demolished because the existing units of the three plots of land could no longer meet the “current market demand.” Furthermore, the initial design could not comfort modern people.
This was amplified by China-based media outlet Vice and the action queried by Asia Finance in a tweet in Sept. 2021.
DUBAWA also discovered that one of the demolished buildings in the TikTok clip is among the buildings earmarked for demolition by the Chinese government in 2020. This was shared on the Chinese social media platform Meipian.
According to Meipian, this building was among properties situated in an “illegal construction area”. It was selected for demolition by the Lingao County Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement Bureau and other public bureaus.
Conclusion
Findings reveal that some of the clips in the TikTok video are unrelated to the recent 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Taiwan.
