Fact Check: Video compilation of disasters falsely passed off as Mountain collapse in Tibet

A video of several mountain collapses is viral on social media with users claiming that the video is from the collapse on Chamo Highway in Tibet. One of the frames shows a huge boulder crushing a car, and another frame shows a cliff collapsing on the people boating in a water body.

NewsMeter received the video on WhatsApp with the caption, “Half of the mountain on Chamo Highway in Tibet collapsed. What a terrible natural disaster !!.”

Fact Check

NewsMeter could decipher that the video does not show a single incident of mountain collapse. Clips of several natural disasters have been merged and falsely linked to a single incident on the Chamo Highway in Tibet.

On conducting a reverse image search of the first keyframe of the video, we found a video with the same visual published on September 7, 2022, by UNILAD, a verified Facebook user. The caption read, “These people heard a mighty crack and realised something wasn't quite right with the mountain…”

A similar search on the keyframes of the second clip led us to a report by the Mexican news website La Razon, published in December 2021, which said after over thirty hours of continuous rain, the incident took place in the Policarpa sector of the Ejido in Nariño, Colombia.

We also found it posted on X on December 28, 2021. The Spanish caption of the post altered the mountain slide on the Policarpa-Ejido road in Colombia.

Upon a reverse image on the keyframes of the third clip, the search directed us to a report by Times Now, which carried a still similar to the video clip. The report was published on July 14, 2023, titled “Dashcam Shows Survivors Exiting Tata Harrier Crushed by Boulder in Nagaland.”

Another similar search on the fourth clip again led us to a report by Times Now, which carried the same video clip. It said the road connecting two tunnels on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway was washed away by the landslide. The report was published on July 28, 2023, titled “Viral Video: Jammu-Srinagar Highway Landslide Washes Away Road Between Tunnels.”

Further, we found the fifth clip on the Vietnamese website named Vietnam Net. The location of the video is not mentioned in the report. However, it was published in August 2022, which confirms that the video is old.

According to an India Today report dated July 30, 2021, the sixth clip shows a landslide in Himachal Pradesh’s Sirmaur. The seventh clip showing the cliff collapse is from Brazil. As per a report by USA Today from January 9, 2022, at least ten people died after a cliff collapsed on the boaters.

The viral video was created using clips of several natural disasters that happened at different times. Hence, we conclude that the claim that the viral video shows a mountain collapsing on the Chamo Highway in Tibet is false.