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Two major earthquakes that devastated Venezuela on June 24, 2026, killing dozens and leaving survivors battling to rescue loved ones trapped beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings, have also prompted a surge of old and unrelated videos spread out of context on social media. For example, one widespread clip was falsely claimed to show the quakes causing explosions on a Caracas metro, when the images were actually from an incident in 2021.<\/p>\n
“Chaos in Caracas metro as powerful 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes hit Venezuela hard. Footage shows total panic underground,” says a June 24, 2026 post on X<\/a> sharing the sequence, in which passengers are evacuating a metro car amid sights and sounds of explosions.<\/p>\n Similar<\/a> posts spread<\/a> across X<\/a> and other platforms, including in Spanish<\/a>, Portuguese<\/a> and other languages<\/a>.<\/p>\n Screenshot from X taken June 25, 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The video spread as offers of rescue support and aid<\/a> poured into Venezuela from around the world after two massive earthquakes<\/a> of magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 blasted areas west of Caracas\u00a0within a minute of each other on June 24.<\/p>\n The two quakes — the second registering as the strongest to hit the country in 126 years — drove residents into the streets while buildings collapsed and electricity cut out, with the northern state of La Guaira hit particularly hard<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the video of explosions at an underground metro station is unrelated to the tremors near the Venezuelan capital.<\/p>\n Reverse image searches<\/a> surfaced the same visual in articles and social media posts from Spanish-language news outlets including\u00a0El Diario<\/a>, Agencia Carabobe\u00f1a de Noticias<\/a>\u00a0and Infobae<\/a>, all of which corresponded to an event that took place September 25, 2021 (archived here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n “Users of the Caracas Metro reported that one of the trains exploded at Los Dos Caminos station,” the post from El Diario said.<\/p>\n AFP reached out to the videographer, credited in the El Diario post, but no response was immediately forthcoming.<\/p>\n The reports attributed the issue to a system failure.<\/p>\n The Caracas Metro provided updates about the situation in real time on X,\u00a0reporting<\/a> that staff were on site leading evacuations and the station had closed due to a train malfunction (archived here<\/a>). Subsequent posts<\/a> documented restoration efforts, and within two hours the service said operations had resumed<\/a> (archived here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n AFP has debunked other misinformation about Venezuela here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n