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| - Recently, a video claiming to show ‘the fastest way to build a bridge’ has been circulating on the internet.
Some viral Facebook posts with this claim can be found here (archive), here (archive), here (archive), here (archive), and here (archive).
Fact Check
An investigation by the Rumor Scanner Team revealed that the video being shared is not showing bridge construction. Instead, it is a reversed video of a motorway bridge being demolished in West Germany.
To verify the authenticity of a viral video, a reverse image search of key frames was performed. This process led to the discovery of a video on the YouTube channel HD1080ide, titled ‘the fastest way to build a bridge,’ dated May 11. The scenes in this video matched those in the viral video, shedding light on the actual footage.
Further investigation revealed an additional video on the same YouTube channel, posted on May 8, which also contained scenes similar to those in the viral video.
This research clarified the context of the footage: it was from the demolition of the Rahmed Valley motorway bridge in Lüdenscheid, North Rhine-Westphalia, in West Germany, which took place on May 7 for safety reasons after the bridge had been closed.
A report from Euronews, a France-based news agency, confirmed that the Lüdenscheid bridge was demolished after being shut down for 17 months due to safety concerns. The bridge, weighing 17,000 tons and measuring 70 meters in height and 453 meters in length, required about 150 kilograms of explosives for its demolition. The motorway bridge over the Rahmed Valley was originally constructed between 1965 and 1968.
Bottom Line
A bridge in Lüdenscheid, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany, was demolished on May 7 due to safety concerns. The demolition involved the use of approximately 150 kilograms of explosives. The video of this demolition was digitally reversed and shared on Facebook with the claim ‘the fastest way to build a bridge’.
Hence, the online circulation of a digitally altered video portraying the demolition of a bridge in Germany, with the claim ‘the fastest way to build a bridge’, is false.
Sources
- HD1080ide – Youtube Video
- Euronews – Watch: Motorway bridge in Germany being demolished
- Rumor Scanner’s own investigation
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