Authors
Vasudha noticed the growing problem of mis/disinformation online after studying New Media at ACJ in Chennai and became interested in separating facts from fiction. She is interested in learning how global issues affect individuals on a micro level. Before joining Newschecker’s English team, she was working with Latestly.
Claim
Visuals of a “gas blast” in Barabanki
Link to the post can be found here.
Fact
We conducted Google reverse image search on the keyframes of the viral video with the certain keywords “fire,” “explosion,” “blast” & “flyover,” which led us to a YouTube video by Manabs Swarg, dated August 20, 2022, titled ‘Cylinder Blast At Bhangagarh, Guwahati, Assam.’
On comparing the keyframes of the YouTube video with the viral clip, we could conclude that both visuals are from the same incident. The YouTube video actually displays a slightly longer version of the viral footage claiming to show a blast in Barabanki.
Taking a clue, we conducted a keyword search for “Bhangagarh, “Guwahati” & “cylinder blast” on Google which yielded multiple news reports from August, 2022 detailing the incident. One such report by East Mojo, dated August 20, 2022, stated, “Fire broke out in a shop under the Bhangagarh flyover (Guwahati) on Saturday morning after a biryani outlet situated on the ground floor of a complex caught fire due to the bursting of 2 LPG cylinders.The fire rose to the 1st floor causing severe damage to the shops and also the street vendors nearby.
East Mojo also uploaded a video report on the incident on its official YouTube channel on August 20, 2022 with the titled ‘Fire breaks out in Guwahati’s Bhangagarh, property worth lakhs gutted.’
We compared the keyframes of the viral video with the visuals of the Bhangagarh fire incident uploaded by East Mojo and found them to be depicting the same mishap.
Multiple other outlets also reported on the incident. You can read such reports here, here, here and here.
We further looked up keywords “Barabanki gas blast,” “Barakani blast,” and “Barabanki fire” on Google but could not find any recent reports on such incidents in the UP city.
We could thus conclude that the viral video claiming to show a “gas blast” in Barakani actually shows visuals of a massive fire triggered by a cylinder explosion in Guwahati’s Bhangagarh area in August.
Notably, a few weeks back the same video was circulating online claiming to show visuals from Agartala. Such posts can be seen here, here and here.
Result: False
Sources
YouTube Video By Manabs Swarg, Dated August 20, 2022
YouTube Video By East Mojo, Dated August 20, 2022
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Authors
Vasudha noticed the growing problem of mis/disinformation online after studying New Media at ACJ in Chennai and became interested in separating facts from fiction. She is interested in learning how global issues affect individuals on a micro level. Before joining Newschecker’s English team, she was working with Latestly.
