Fact check: Video of building collapse is from Florida in 2021, not recent earthquake in Turkey

BrieAnna J. Frank, USA TODAY
·2 min read

The claim: Video shows building collapsing from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey

A Feb. 6 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) included a video that showed a building collapsing.

“Powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake hits in southern Turkey,” reads the start of the post. “There are reports of several hundred dead.”

The post was shared almost 100 times in two days.

Follow us on Facebook! Like our page to get updates throughout the day on our latest debunks

Our rating: False

The video shows footage of a condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida, in 2021. It does not show footage from the recent earthquake in Turkey.

News outlets shared footage of Florida building collapse in 2021

The video is almost two years old and shows the collapse of a condominium in Surfside that killed 98 people and displaced countless others.

It first appeared on the internet in June 2021, posted by Andy Slater, a reporter for FOX Sports 640 South Florida.

Other outlets, including WTVJ-TV in Miami, KABC-TV in Los Angeles and The Guardian also reported the video was from that event.

A man walks through the rubble of destroyed buildings in Antakya, southern Turkey. With the hope of finding survivors fading, stretched rescue teams in Turkey and Syria searched Wednesday for signs of life in the rubble of thousands of buildings toppled by the catastrophic earthquake.
A man walks through the rubble of destroyed buildings in Antakya, southern Turkey. With the hope of finding survivors fading, stretched rescue teams in Turkey and Syria searched Wednesday for signs of life in the rubble of thousands of buildings toppled by the catastrophic earthquake.

Fact check: Video shows 2018 tsunami in Indonesia, not from recent earthquakes in Turkey

Google satellite images from Surfside match the area shown in the video. Two adjacent pools and an oval-shaped building can be seen in both the video and the satellite image.

The death toll from the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria surpassed 19,300 on Feb. 9, placing it among the deadliest disasters in recent history, as reported by USA TODAY.

When reached by USA TODAY for comment on the claim, the user acknowledged the caption was incorrect.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. 

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Video shows Florida condo collapse, not Turkey earthquake