A decades-old picture of a landslide caused by a massive earthquake in El Salvador has resurfaced in social media posts that falsely claimed it was taken in India in late July 2024. The false claim surfaced after days of torrential monsoon rains battered India’s southern coastal state of Kerala, causing landslides that authorities said killed more than 200 people.
“The death toll in the landslide in Kerala’s Wayanad district has crossed 200, looking at the picture you can imagine the extent of loss of life and property,” read the Hindi-language caption to the photo shared on Facebook on August 2, 2024.
The post circulated as Indian rescue crews scoured mud-caked tea plantations and villages with little hope of finding more survivors from deadly landslides on July 30 in Kerala.
Blocked roads into the Wayanad disaster area — a district famed for the tea estates that crisscross its hilly countryside — have complicated relief efforts.
The picture was also shared with similar captions on social media platform X and Facebook.
However, a Google reverse image search found it in fact showed a landslide following an earthquake in El Salvador more than two decades ago.
The Associated Press (AP) news agency published the same picture on January 14, 2001 (archived link).
“A landslide cuts a swath of destruction through the town of Santa Tecla near San Salvador, El Salvador Saturday, Jan. 13, 2001 following a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that caused widespread damage across El Salvador,” its caption partly read.
The earthquake killed about 700 people, according to official figures.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the picture as seen in the false posts (left) and as published by the AP (right):
An AFP photographer also took a picture of the landslide from another angle on January 16, 2001.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the picture shared with false claims (left) and the AFP photo of the same location (right):
Other outlets, such as the BBC News and The Guardian, have published similar pictures showing the El Salvador landslide (archived link here and here).
