After a devastating earthquake in China’s remote Tibet region killed at least 126 people and reduced houses and buildings to rubble, footage of motorists stopping on a shaking bridge was shared in social media posts falsely linking it to the powerful tremor. The footage has circulated since at least April 2024, in social media posts following an earthquake that struck Taiwan’s Hualien county at the time.
“Surveillance footage from the Shigatse overpass bridge during the earthquake in Tibet,” reads simplified Chinese text on a Douyin video shared on January 8, 2025.
The clip, showing motorists driving onto a bridge before the structure starts shaking and forces them to stop, was shared a day after Tibet’s rural, high-altitude Tingri county was struck by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 126 people and injured 188 others (archived link).
The China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC) measured the quake’s magnitude as 6.8, while the US Geological Survey reported it as 7.1.
Local officials said more than 3,600 houses had collapsed due to the earthquake, which struck an area about 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Mount Everest near China’s border with Nepal.
“I hope people in the disaster area are safe,” the video’s caption added.
Screenshot of the false Douyin post, captured on January 10, 2025
The same footage was shared elsewhere on Douyin, as well as on Weibo here and here.
The clip, however, is old.
Hualien quake
A reverse image search on Google, followed by a keyword search on Instagram, found the same video in an April 7, 2024 post that read “#Taiwan #Hualien 7.2 magnitude earthquake. Look at how much the bridge is shaking in Hualien” (archived link).
Sticker text on the video in traditional Chinese text and in English reads “Taiwan 7.2 magnitude earthquake”.
The 7.4 magnitude quake that struck the mountainous county triggered landslides that blocked roads and damaged several buildings (archived link). At least 17 people were killed, and more than 1,100 were injured, AFP reported (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the falsely shared clip (left) and the old Instagram video (right):
Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared clip (left) and the old Instagram video (right)
The same video also circulated on social media posts after the Hualien quake in April 2024, such as on Facebook and TikTok (archived links here and here).
Further keyword searches found a statement from the county government that said the Meilun River Bridge in Hualien needed to undergo emergency repairs after the quake rendered it impassable, and it would be reopened on April 10, 2024 (archived link).
The bridge in the video matches Google Street View imagery of the Meilun River Bridge in Hualien (archived link).
AFP has debunked other claims about the earthquake in Tibet here, here and here.