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| - Fact Check: This scary photo is not from Joshimath - in fact, it's not even from India
A place that would otherwise see tourists at this time of the year now has buildings marked with red 'X' marks amid the land subsidence tragedy.
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India Today Fact Check
This photo does not show Joshimath. It shows the 2018 Llusco landslide that occurred in the Cusco region of Peru.
Joshimath, a pilgrimage town and the winter seat of the Badrinath, has lately made headlines for all the wrong reasons. A place that would otherwise see tourists at this time of the year now has buildings marked with red ‘X’ marks amid the land subsidence tragedy. Water gushing from under the ground and cracks in establishments has become a common sight in the panic-stricken city.
In fact, Joshimath and its surrounding areas have reportedly been sinking at the rate of 6.5 cm per year. With almost 700 buildings now marked unsafe in the holy town of Joshimath, more than 80 families so far have had to shift to safer locations away from their homes in the bone-chilling Uttarakhand winter. Locals reportedly blame the nearby Tapovan project of the National Thermal Power Corporation or NTPC, saying it has aggravated the situation.
As this crisis continued, a postcard about Joshimath that was widely shared on social media, featured a photo of land broken into numerous blocks. Scary giant cracks and fissures were visible in the aerial shot. The postcard said: “600 families of Uttarakhand’s sinking Joshimath to be shifted to safer locations, plea in SC to declare it ‘National Disaster’. Construction works around hills halted, PMO takes charge.”
AFWA found that the photo does not show the sinking Joshimath, but a 2018 landslide in Peru, a South American nation.
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A reverse search of the photo in question led us to a YouTube video titled “5 biggest landslides in all history.” The video shared on August 8, 2022, featured the viral photo while talking about the 1970 Ancash earthquake, the most catastrophic natural disaster in the history of Peru. Additionally, they credited the photo to the Ministry of Defense of Peru. This suggested that the photo was not from Joshimath, or probably India at all.
We also found the same photo shared by a blog post written by Philip S. Prince, a faculty member at Virginia Tech, an American university. The blog used a sand model to explain the 2018 Llusco landslide that occurred outside of Cusco, Peru. It further mentioned that the landslide destroyed the village of Lutto Kututo.
Further, searches led us to a blog by AGU Blogosphere, a network of blogs hosted by the American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest organisation of Earth and space scientists. The blog post from March 15, 2018, stated that a dramatic landslide at Llusco in the Cusco region of Peru destroyed a hundred houses and led to the government declaring an emergency.
The landslide, which reportedly covered an area of about 30 hectares, was caused by high pore water pressures.
We also found the viral photo tweeted by the official handle of the Ministry of Defense of Peru on March 16, 2018. The caption in Spanish read: “Minister of Defense, Jorge Kisic, together with the regional governor of Cusco, @EdwinLiconaGRC, carries out an inspection overflight in the area affected by landslides in the district of Llusco, Cusco.”
We also found a drone video of the landslide-affected region shot in March 2018 by Fameco Producciones, a film production studio based in Peru. The area filled with cracks and fissures resembled those in the viral photo.
Thus, it became clear that this photo showed a 2018 natural disaster in Peru, and not the ongoing crisis in Joshimath, Uttarakhand.
(Written by Sanjana Saxena)
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