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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Disasters & emergencies fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about disasters & emergencies. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

3,262 published reviews in this topic

The QuintDisasters & emergencies

Did a cable car in Haridwar catch fire

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video circulated as showing a fire on the Mansa Devi ropeway in Haridwar, with people allegedly burned alive. The Quint’s review says that the fire shown in the video did not happen in Haridwar; it identifies the footage as coming from a television-show shoot elsewhere, where a crew member used a firecracker without permission. This distinction matters: the footage shows a cable-car fire, but the investigation found that it was misrepresented as a Haridwar incident. The review describes how it traced the video. It used InVID to examine the footage frame by frame, then reverse-searched the frames through Google. That search led to a YouTube upload from 2015. The article reports that a comment on that video identified the location as Israel; searches using the terms “Jerico Calbe car, Israel” then led to a 2015 Ten News video and a Metro report. The Metro article described a cable car in Palestine catching fire during a TV-show shoot after a production assistant used a firecracker without prior permission. These steps connect the circulated footage to an earlier production-related incident, rather than establishing a fire at Haridwar’s Mansa Devi. The review’s conclusion is therefore specific to the viral video and the location attached to it; the supplied evidence does not provide a broader account of the ropeway’s safety or other incidents there.

FACTLYDisasters & emergencies

Rajdhani train accident at Kanpur.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post claimed that photos showed a recent Rajdhani train accident at Kanpur on July 2, 2019, with people jumping from a moving train. FACTLY examined the images in the post and reported that they came from different incidents, rather than one recent accident at Kanpur. The review describes using Google reverse image searches on the fire and derailment photos and Yandex reverse image search on the image of an injured woman. The fire photos were traced to a 2018 train fire near Birlanagar station in Gwalior; the derailment photo matched coverage of a 2014 Delhi-Dibrugarh Rajdhani Express derailment near Chapra, Bihar. The injured-woman image appeared in a tweet from April 2018 about an attack in West Bengal. These origins place the photos in different years and locations. The review also says the Gwalior fire involved a train whose route did not pass through Kanpur, and that the Rajdhani derailment happened in Bihar, not Kanpur. It reports that no train derailment or fire accident was reported in Kanpur that month. On that evidence, the photos did not substantiate the claimed recent Rajdhani accident at Kanpur.

FACTLYDisasters & emergencies

The collapsed ‘Jamnagar-Junagarh highway bridge’ was inaugurated by PM Modi three months ago.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns the bridge shown in a social-media post as a collapsed “Jamnagar-Junagarh highway bridge,” allegedly inaugurated by PM Modi three months earlier. FACTLY identifies the collapse as having occurred at Jamkandorna in Rajkot district. It reports that the bridge on the Jamnagar–Junagadh road, near Satodak village and about 14 km from Jamkandorna, collapsed in June 2019; the review says the claim wrongly attributes its inauguration to Modi. To investigate the bridge’s age, FACTLY says it traced the location using information in newspaper reports and examined historical satellite imagery in Google Earth. Its account says the bridge was visible at that location at least as far back as 2009, before Modi became prime minister. The review also reports that Rajkot collector Rahul Gupta told a Times of India correspondent that the bridge had been built 45 years earlier by the state roads and buildings department, later handed over to the National Highways Authority of India, and was never inaugurated by Modi. The review’s evidence therefore contradicts the post’s timeline: the bridge existed well before the alleged inauguration three months before the collapse. FACTLY also reports that Gupta described it as being in a dilapidated condition before it fell. Although newspaper reports helped identify the bridge and its location, the review notes that one article did not provide relevant information about its age and another did not state the construction year; its stated date evidence comes from the historical satellite imagery and Gupta’s reported account.