After a devastating earthquake struck the remote Tibetan region of China, a photo of destroyed buildings and cars spread widely in social media posts, falsely claiming it showed the aftermath of the disaster. The photo was actually taken in Turkey’s Hatay province after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake occurred in February 2023.
“Very strong earthquake M 7.1 China Nepal. At least 53 people are dead after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in China Tibet. My prediction was successful,” read an X-post written in Nepali and English, posted on January 7 .
It shared a dramatic photo of collapsed buildings surrounded by rubble, next to a sign from a Turkish shop that read: “Mursaloğlu Cam Balkon”.
The photo spread in news reports and social media posts in several languages – including English, Hindi, French and Vietnamese – after an earthquake on January 7 shook the remote Tibetan region of China, killing at least 126 people (archived link) .
Another 188 were injured and thousands of buildings were damaged in the earthquake that struck the rural, high-altitude Tingri district, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Mount Everest, near China’s border with Nepal. Tremors were also felt in neighboring Nepal and India, although there were no casualties.
The China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC) measured the magnitude of the earthquake as 6.8, while the US Geological Survey reported it as 7.1.
Screenshot of the wrongly shared X-post, captured on January 9, 2024
However, a reverse image search on Google published the photo in a news story about an earthquake on February 6, 2023 that killed more than 50,000 people in southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria (archived here).
“Why We Were Caught Unprepared by the Kahramanmaraş Earthquake,” reads the headline of the article in The Architect’s Newspaper of March 31, 2023 (archived link).
Kahramanmaras is a Turkish city located just 50 kilometers from the epicenter of the first major earthquake.
The story was written by Turkish urban planner Tayfun Kahraman, who explored the lessons to be learned from the earthquake from an architectural and urban planning perspective.
The photo was shared in fake social media posts in the article with the caption: “Earthquake damage in İskenderun, a city on the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey’s Hatay province (Çağlar Oskay/Unsplash)”.
A keyword search on Google found the original photo published by photographer Çağlar Oskay on the stock photo website Unsplash on February 24, 2023 (archived link).
The caption of the photo stated that the photo was taken on February 6, 2023 in İskenderun.
AFP used the shop sign in the photo to geolocate it to 86 Ziya Gökalp Cd in İskenderun (archived link).
More than 850,000 buildings collapsed during the first earthquake and the thousands of aftershocks that followed (archived link).
A year later, hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced, many of whom live in container cities.
