A violent tremor that struck Taiwan on April 3 caused landslides in the mountainous east of the island. However, dramatic footage on social media of vehicles crushed by rocks on a highway actually had nothing to do with the disaster. The video was filmed in Peru and appeared online weeks before the earthquake, the strongest in Taiwan in 25 years.
Dashcam footage shows a huge boulder falling from a hillside and crashing into a moving truck on a highway. More rocks fall and appear to land on the filming vehicle.
“There are still people trapped in the mountains who have not yet been rescued,” said a traditional Chinese post on social media platform X, where the video was shared on April 4, 2024.
“This earthquake is huge and I have friends who are homeless.”
The latitude and longitude codes appear in the bottom left corner of the clip.
The X post was shared the day after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck Taiwan, killing at least 16 people and injuring more than 1,100.
Strict building codes and comprehensive disaster preparedness were credited with averting an even greater disaster.
But landslides around the Hualien epicenter still blocked tunnels and roads, making the mountainous terrain around the county difficult for rescuers to access survivors and victims.
The video was also shared in a Facebook post that incorrectly linked it to the quake, while a Taiwanese newspaper article incorrectly published a screenshot of it.
Landslide in Peru
A reverse image search of the video and keyword searches on Google turned up the footage in an article about a landslide in Peru in March – a month before the Taiwan earthquake.
Peruvian newspaper La República reported that no one was killed in the landslide, which caused significant damage to the highway (archived link).
“The incident severely impaired Two trucks drove through the area, although fortunately the gigantic rocks did not cause any loss of life,” it said in Spanish.
“They only damaged the rear part of the vehicles, which prevented a major tragedy.”
The incident occurred on March 2nd Central Street Highway in the San Mateo district of the Huarochirí province, reported the Republic – which is located around 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of the capital Lima.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in fake posts (left) and La República’s article (right):
The Peruvian state broadcaster TV Perú also published the footage in various reports about the incident (archived link).
Google Street View images, based on the latitude and longitude codes visible in the footage and the location mentioned in news reports, confirm that the video was filmed on Peru’s Carretera Central highway.
Below is a screenshot comparison between the video (left) and Google Maps images of the highway (right), with the similarities highlighted by AFP:
Natural disasters often lead to a flood of misinformation. AFP has debunked various false claims surrounding the Taiwan earthquake here.