A video on Facebook (FB) has claimed that the CN Tower, one of Canada’s most famous landmarks, collapsed due to an earthquake and showed footage of the building. This is fake.
Published on April 10 by a Filipino FB user, the video bore the untrue caption: “Earthquake in Canada today”
The one-minute video showed various footage of the CN Tower taken from different angles during a supposed earthquake that hit Toronto, Canada. It showed the tower violently swaying and eventually collapsing while audio of screaming people and gunshots could be heard in the background.
These are edited footages. The short clips are not from real events but edits made by a VFX artist.
Canadian graphic designer Nemya Begloo published these videos on his TikTok account. His videos did not show screaming people and even had a disclaimer that it was a VFX creation in the captions.
In a January interview with BlogTo, a Toronto-based lifestyle blog, Begloo said his work is “purely VFX” but some people nevertheless fall for it.
The erroneous FB video also showed another clip which featured several police vehicles with blaring sirens rushing to a structure that collapsed on a street, supposedly caused by an earthquake. The original video was taken in Florida by a TikTok user, not in Canada, and was shot in the aftermath of a partial crane failure.
The spurious video continued to circulate in local social media spaces after Canada experienced a 4.1 magnitude earthquake two weeks ago.
The FB netizen’s post has garnered over 1,000 reactions, 360 comments, 400 shares and 144,000 views. At least three other Filipino FB users also reposted the video.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
