Following the powerful twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela on June 24, 2026, social media platforms have been flooded with dramatic videos allegedly showing the destruction caused by the disaster. As live coverages tracked a rapidly rising death toll, with officials warning the count could climb into the thousands, viral clips claiming to show the disaster unfolding spread just as quickly. While Venezuela did experience severe damage following the earthquakes, several of the most widely shared videos were actually filmed years earlier in other countries or artificially generated content.
The misinformation emerged as Venezuela continued recovery efforts following twin earthquakes measuring magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 that struck the country on June 24, 2026. According to the latest official figures cited by USGS and international outlets, at least 1,430 people have died, more than 3,200 have been injured, and tens of thousands remain unaccounted for as search-and-rescue operations continue.
Footage 1: Viral Twin-Tower Collapse Video Has Been Repeatedly Misattributed to Multiple Earthquakes
One of the most widely shared videos following the Venezuela earthquakes shows two red-and-blue apartment towers collapsing almost simultaneously as dust engulfs the surrounding area. Social media users claimed the footage showed buildings destroyed during the June 2026 Venezuela earthquakes.
However, evidence indicates that the video predates the disaster by several years and is, in fact, a serial offender: this is not the first, second, or even third time the same clip has been falsely attached to a real earthquake. It has been repeatedly resurfaced, repackaged, and recycled in connection with unrelated earthquakes around the world, each time presented as fresh, breaking footage.
According to an earlier investigation by our own Fact Crescendo Myanmar, the same footage circulated in July 2025 with false claims that it depicted destruction caused by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake in Alaska. The same video was also shared in late 2024 with claims that it showed earthquake damage in California.
Our further analysis conducted for this investigation supports that assessment. Hive’s AI-generated content detection system classified the video as 80.3% likely to contain AI-generated content, with several individual frames receiving AI-generation probabilities of around 79%.
Consequently, this video is not representative of the 2026 earthquakes in Venezuela, nor does it show the 2025 seismic events in Alaska or Myanmar, nor any earthquake in California; it is not linked to any documented earthquake anywhere.
Taken together with the AI-detection results above, the most probable explanation is that this clip is synthetic, simulation-style content with no real-world disaster origin at all, footage that did not happen, attached in turn to whichever disaster was trending at the time.
Footage 2: Building Collapse Video Actually Shows the 2023 Türkiye Earthquake
Another video circulating on social media allegedly shows a building collapsing during the recent Venezuela earthquakes. Posts accompanying the footage claim that it depicts destruction caused by the magnitude 7.1 and 7.5 earthquakes that struck Venezuela in June 2026.
However, our investigation found that the footage predates the Venezuela earthquake by more than three years.
Fact Crescendo Tamil noted that several architectural elements visible in the footage, including decorative crescent-shaped lighting commonly associated with Islamic religious settings, indicated that the video was unlikely to have originated in Venezuela.
A reverse image search subsequently traced the video back to coverage of the devastating February 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria. The same footage appeared on YouTube uploads from February 2023 and was later used by several international media organizations in their reporting on the Türkiye disaster.
The evidence therefore confirms that the video does not depict the 2026 Venezuela earthquake but rather shows a building collapse recorded during the 2023 Türkiye earthquake.
Footage 3: Building Collapse During Demolition in Türkiye
A third video circulating online shows a white building collapsing. The post falsely claimed the footage showed another building destroyed during the Venezuelan earthquakes.
Reverse image searches identified the original source as footage from Türkiye following the February 2023 earthquakes. The video was published by Turkish media outlet İhlas News Agency (İHA) and documented the collapse of an already damaged structure during demolition operations in Kahramanmaraş province after the earthquake disaster. It was therefore unrelated to Venezuela and was recorded approximately three years before.
Therefore, the video does not show destruction caused by the 2026 Venezuela earthquakes. Instead, it documents the planned demolition of an earthquake-damaged building in Türkiye following one of the deadliest natural disasters in the country’s history.
Title: Multiple Viral Videos Falsely Linked to the Venezuela Earthquakes
Fact Check By: Pranpreeya
Result: Misleading
