By: Toibah Kirmani
July 19 2023
2018 video of man rescuing his children during earthquake in Alaska shared as recent
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
The video was captured in Anchorage in 2018 when an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude had struck Alaska.
Claim ID 5c39ffe4
Context
An earthquake of 7.2 magnitude hit the Alaska Peninsula region early on July 16. At first, there was a warning about a possible tsunami, but it was later withdrawn. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake happened fairly close to the surface, about 20.3 miles deep.
So far, there haven't been any reports of damage or injuries, but some people posted videos on Twitter showing the effects of the earthquake. One video shows the interior of a house and a father grabbing his little daughter and running from a house as the quake hits, returning seconds later to take a younger baby from a highchair. The mother also appears and signals for them to leave the house.
A Twitter user shared this video with the caption, "Please pray for #Alaska. An #earthquake of 7.5Mg hit a few hours ago," and has been viewed 294,100 times so far. Archive of the post can be found here and here.
In Fact
We searched the video's keyframes and found that it was uploaded in 2018 on elsalvador.com. The website posted the article in Spanish titled "What would you save first during an earthquake? An Alaskan family forgot their youngest child," along with the December 6, 2018 video.
We also found that WISH-TV (Channel 8), a news network based in the U.S., shared the same video on December 2, 2018. They described it as home surveillance footage capturing a powerful earthquake hitting Anchorage, a city in Alaska.
The video was also shared by Alaska's News Source, a local news source, on December 1, 2018. According to this report, on November 30, Jesse Elmore, the father in the video, felt the initial shaking while his baby was in a high chair. Elmore said his sole focus was bringing his whole family together to ensure their safety. "The dad in me kicked in," he said, per the report.
The video captures the moments that an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude struck Alaska on November 30, 2018, said to be the second largest earthquake since 1964, according to a CNN report on December 2, 2018. Although there was damage to roads and buildings, officials reported no fatalities or serious injuries resulting from the earthquake.
The Verdict
The video showing a man rescuing his children during an earthquake in Alaska is not recent but from 2018. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.