Claim: A social media video apparently shows a cat being rescued after a powerful earthquake hit Turkey and Syria earlier this month.
Fact: The claim about the video is misleading. The video is from 2018, when a cat was rescued from a fire in Volgograd, Russia.
A massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria in the early morning of 6 February 2023, killing around 40,000 people and injuring tens of thousands.
Fact or Fiction?
On 9 February 2023, a Twitter user posted a video with an English caption, “The cutest and emotional recovery. Salute to the rescue team for the effort. Every life is important. #Turkey #Syria #TurkeyQuake #TurkeySyriaEarthquake.” The 1-minute video shows a rescue worker tending to an injured cat with people applauding around him.
Soch Fact Check conducted an InVID analysis of the video keyframes to investigate the claim.
The results showed a video post on Imgur (an American online image-sharing and hosting service) on January 2021. The video in-text caption says that the cat was almost dead when firefighters rescued it from an apartment fire that killed three people. The rescue officer can be seen wearing the uniform of a firefighter in the video. However, it was not confirmed where the cat was rescued.
A further search showed the same video shared by Russian broadcaster V1.RU on 26 February 2018. The watermark “V1.RU” is also visible in the top left corner of the videos being shared.
The Russian language description of the video translated into English reads, “In Volgograd today, February 26, while extinguishing a house on Kuznetsova Street in the Krasnooktyabrsky District, firefighters rescued a cat poisoned by carbon monoxide. One of the rescuers carried the already almost lifeless body of a pet to the street. After an indirect heart massage and a sip of oxygen, the cat was resurrected to the delight of the excited owner.”
It is true that cats were rescued in Turkey after the recent quakes, this particular video is old.
Virality
On Twitter, the misleading video received 194.6k views, 2,390 likes and 400 retweets. It can be seen here, here and here.
The video with the misleading claim was also posted here, here and here on Facebook.
Conclusion: The video of a rescue operator massaging a cat and saving its life is not from the 2023 Turkey earthquake, it was filmed after a 2018 fire in Russia.