A tweet posted on July 18, 2021 warns Kenyans against crowding around overturned fuel tankers, while citing the Malanga Kisumu-Busia road incident.
The tweet gained a lot of traction, with over 600 retweets and more than 900 likes at the time of this publication. It contains a video showing a crowd hovering around an overturned tanker while carrying buckets and jerricans in a bid to siphon something from the tanker before the tanker explodes (see the video attached below).
Background
According to a report by The Star news website, the death toll from a fuel tanker incident that took place on Saturday, July 17, 2021 in Malanga, along the Kisumu-Busia highway rose to 17 as of Tuesday, July 20. 12 people died on the spot. The casualties are among those who had gone to siphon fuel from the tanker after it overturned when avoiding a head-on collision with a trailer. About 26 people were injured according to a Citizen TV report.
Fuel tanker incidents have a harrowing history in Kenya given the 2009 Sachangwan case that involved hundreds of casualties. More than 100 people died, out of which 91 were burnt beyond recognition in the incident that happened on January 31, 2009. Like the Malanga incident, most of the Sachangwan casualties had been siphoning fuel from an overturned tanker.
Verification
After using the Invid tool frame-by-frame fragmentation of the video and running one of the frames through a Google image reverse search, Piga Firimbi found that the video originates from an incident that occurred in Colombia in July 2020.
An article published on the Daily Mail website on July 7, 2020 states that the incident happened in Tasajera district of Colombia, where a tanker ferrying oil lost control and overturned. Residents crowded around the overturned tanker to siphon oil and shortly after, the tanker exploded. The footage was also published on El Tiempo and Documenting Reality websites which similarly referred to Colombia as the origin of the video.
Verdict
Since the tweet citing the Malanga Kisumu-Busia road incident does not precisely state that this is where the video comes from, Piga Firimbi found the tweet MISLEADING.
This story was produced by Africa Uncensored in partnership with Code for Africa with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie.
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