Fact Check: Viral video showing massive landslide is not from Wayanad, Kerala
The death toll in the landslide-hit Wayanad reached 369. Army personnel and other forces, including NDRF, Navy and Kerala police, and the Kerala forest department unitedly undertook rescue and search operations to find the missing people in the landslide-hit areas in Wayanad.
Claim :
Viral video shows the massive landslide that occurred in Wayanad, KeralaFact :
Viral video shows the landslide that shook Zigui County of Hubei Province, China
The death toll in the landslide-hit Wayanad reached 369. Army personnel and other forces, including NDRF, Navy and Kerala police, and the Kerala forest department unitedly undertook rescue and search operations to find the missing people in the landslide-hit areas in Wayanad.
As per official records, 206 people are still missing from several places. Several videos and images are being shared on social media falsely attributing them to the Wayanad landslide that took place on July 20, 2024. In one such video in circulation on YouTube, users claim that it shows a landslide that occurred in Wayanad, Kerala. The video shows a huge landslide with the road falling off along with mud and trees.
Fact check:
The claim is False. The viral video shows a landslide that took place in Zigui County in China.
When we used the keyframes extracted from the video and searched using reverse image search on Google, we found that the video was published on social media pages like X (Twitter) and YouTube by some users on July 17, 2024, with the captions: “A huge landslide in Zigui County of Hubei Province, China (17.07.2024)”
When searched further, we found that a website named eos.org published an article on this landslide. The article states that a remarkable landslide video was shared widely on social media, that occurred on July 17, 2024, in Zigui County, China. The location is reported to be Jiajiadian village, Guizhou Town , Zigui County, Hubei Province, on the banks of the Three Gorges Reservoir. Reports indicate that the landslide has a volume of about 800,000 cubic meters.
The context for this landslide is a spell of very heavy rainfall that has been affecting a large area of China. To manage downstream flooding, the Three Gorges Dam has been used to store water, but in the last two days, the gates have been opened to create new storage capacity ahead of the next round of rainfall.
The report of the landslide was also published in a Chinese website named ntdtv.com, which also shared the viral video. According to the report, On the morning of July 17, a large-scale landslide occurred in Zigui County, Yichang, Hubei Province , causing damage to a 1,200-meter road (Wugao Road) and 60 acres of citrus orchards. Hence, the viral video shows the landslide that occurred in Zigui county of China and not Wayanad, Kerala. The claim is False.
