Fact Check: Viral House Collapse Video Not From NTT Earthquake

A video depicting a house collapsing has been widely shared on Facebook, with claims that it captured the aftermath of a magnitude 7.7 earthquake in Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) on August 15, 2026. The nine-second clip shows a white, two-story building crumbling into a cloud of dust, with posts asserting, "The sheer force of the NTT earthquake brought down the building."

However, a fact-check by Tempo has debunked this claim. Through reverse image searches and verification with credible sources, it was determined that the footage is not from Indonesia. The video was actually uploaded on August 12, 2026, by users Jaime Luis Rodriguez and Red Informativa, documenting the impact of a magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck Colombia's Chocó region on August 10, 2026.

While the earthquake in NTT did cause significant damage, with the Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) reporting 19,297 damaged houses as of August 18, 2026, the viral video is misleading. The footage showing the house collapse in Colombia occurred days before the NTT earthquake and was attributed to structures not designed to withstand seismic activity. Colombian authorities confirmed two houses in Bogotá collapsed following the earthquake due to structural weaknesses.