Claim: A social media video shows Tarbela Dam reaching its total capacity and the dam’s spillways being opened to avoid any damage to the barrier in August 2022.
Fact: The claim is misleading. The video is not from August 2022 but was reportedly shared in 2015 after an earthquake in October 2015 jolted Pakistan.
On 27 August 2022, a Twitter user posted a video with the caption, “#TarbelaDam, Pakistan’s biggest & world largest earth-fill dam, has reached its full capacity. Dam spillways have been opened to avoid any damage to the dam. May Allah help us.”
The video started making rounds on social media during the recent floods in Pakistan in which more than 1200 people died and more than 33 million have been “badly affected”.
Fact or Fiction?
To investigate the claim, Soch Fact Check took screenshots of different keyframes of the video and conducted reverse image searches on Google.
The search led to a YouTube video uploaded on 6 November 2015. The video description reads, “This relief valve (Emergency Discharge) was operated in tarbela power station after earthquake of 8.1 intensity which jolted Pakistan on 26-10-2015. When earthquake was occurred, sand and clay started to come with water into penstock and other cooling water pipelines. Due to this dirty water, all pipelines got choked. That is the reason, water was bypassed through relief valve to discharge dirty water into tailrace until water got cleared from sand/clay.”
On 26 October 2015, Pakistan was hit by an earthquake in which hundreds died, and many got injured.
However, Soch Fact Check could not independently as certain that the 2015 video was from Tarbela Dam as no other information was available on the video’s origin.
The Twitter user Wali Khan who first posted the video later confirmed that the video is not from August 2022 but 2015.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 30-day period from 6 August 2022 to 5 September 2022 using the video caption as key term;
The results showed that the video in question with similar claim received 25,000 interactions across 120 posts on Facebook. It was shared here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The same video was also shared by the verified Facebook page of Punjabi language Indian newspaper JagBani in connection to the recent floods in Pakistan
Conclusion: The video of spillways being opened at Tarebla Dam was not taken during the recent floods in Pakistan. The video was taken in 2015.