Misleading: Cars Damaged After Roof Collapses in Lebanon
The Claim
Strong winds cause the concrete roofs to fall and damage parked cars in Lebanon.
Emerging story
A video circulating on social media, including Twitter and Facebook, claims strong winds in Lebanon caused a concrete roof to fall on a few parked cars, heavily damaging them. The claims add that this incident occurred outside the Casino Du Liban. The 15-second video shows a row of parked cars on the side of the road, and then suddenly a large concrete slab falling, causing significant damage to all the vehicles. A user went as far as to criticize the Casino for an opening while other Lebanese are ‘hungry,’ referring to high inflation and economic turmoil in the country.
Misbar’s Analysis
The Misbar investigation found this claim to be misleading. Firstly, a close inspection of the video in the first few seconds shows a date stamp of “2020-07-30,” as circled in the image below. It was already indicating that this is an old video.
Secondly, a Google image reverse of still shots of the video found it to be an accident that had occurred in Medina in Saudi Arabia. News articles including RT, Aljazeera, and Albawabh confirmed the incident happened on 30 July 2020, when strong winds and rainfall caused extensive damage in Medina, including the one in the claim. Some of the articles also shared the same video and ones from different angles. The video was posted on Youtube in 2020, also seen here.
Lastly, according to Lebanon24, the Casino Du Liban management released a statement denying that the incident occurred outside their premises or anywhere in their vicinity. However, the article failed to shed any other details on the origins of the video. Given the context of the video, the Misbar team confirms the claim is misleading. It did not occur recently in Lebanon but instead in July 2020 in Saudi Arabia.
