Old video from Japan passed off as earthquake footage from Turkey

NewsMeter found that the video shows the visual of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

By Md Mahfooz Alam  Published on  8 Feb 2023 6:57 AM GMT
Old video from Japan passed off as earthquake footage from Turkey

Hyderabad: A video showing vehicles shaking on a highway is doing the rounds on the internet. Social Media users are linking it to the recent Turkey earthquake.

Facebook users shared the video with the caption, ā€œTurkey Earthquake May Allah forgive all our sins..........!ā€


Click here and here to view the posts.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video shows the visual of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

On performing a reverse image search of the videoā€™s keyframe, we found a still from the video published by the website 'Redrum Tokyo' on 13 March 2017. It said that it shows Metropolitan Highway 6.

The website also carried a YouTube link to the same video. According to the Japanese title, it showed "Metropolitan Expressway No. 6 at the time of the 3.11 earthquake Part 3."

This video also carried the timestamp reading 2011.03.11 and location coordinates.

Moving further, we checked location coordinates on Google Maps and found it showed Sumida City in Tokyo, Japan

Finally, we looked for the street view of the location coordinates on Google Maps and found that it shows the same building on the left side of the highway as seen in the viral video.


According to National Geographic and Live Science, on 11 March 2011, Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in its recorded history which also triggered Tsunami.

It is evident from the findings that the video shows the visual of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Hence, we conclude that the claim that the video shows the recent earthquake in Turkey is false.

Claim Review:The video shows the recent earthquake in Turkey
Claimed By:Social Media users
Claim Reviewed By:NewsMeter
Claim Source:Facebook
Claim Fact Check:False
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