Video shows earthquake on New Year's Day in Japan, no quake in August 2024

The posts appeared online one day after a powerful 7.1 magnitude Earthquake struck Miyazaki Prefecture in southwestern Japan on August 8, 2024. No major damage was reported and only relatively small tsunami waves lashed the coast (archived link).

The country's weather agency said a major earthquake was more likely following the quake, which injured at least 15 people, but the warning for the megaquake was lifted on August 15 (archived link).

The same video was shared in several languages, including Korean, Filipino, Burmese and Chinese, along with similar claims.

But the footage first circulated on the Internet in January 2024 and shows another earthquake in Ishikawa, a prefecture in central Japan.

Earthquake of January 1

A reverse image search using the video thumbnail and keyword searches on Google yielded a similar longer the footage published on the Getty Images website (archived link).

Part of the caption read: “Japan: People hide under tables at a bowling alley in Ishikawa during a magnitude 7.5 earthquake. A strong earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture on January 1.”

The video was credited to Spectee, which describes itself as a provider of UGC aggregation services specialization on real-time disaster communication in Japan (archived link).

Below you can see a screenshot comparison of the Facebook post (left) and the video published by Spectee (right):

International media such as CNN and Al Jazeera also showed the same video in their reports on the earthquake that struck Japan in January. 1 (archived links here and here).

AFP has already debunked misinformation about the earthquake in Japan in August 2024 here, here and here.