Twin Venezuelan earthquakes not caused by HAARP

False claims that twin earthquakes that recently struck Venezuela were caused by a research project studying the Earth’s atmosphere have been shared online.

The posts circulating on Facebook and X, link the natural disaster on 24 June that killed more than 2,500 people, and left many thousands more unaccounted for, to the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Gakona, Alaska.

One such post says: “Venezuela got HAARPED. Those ‘earthquakes’ were engineered.”

But there is no evidence to support this idea, and experts have previously told fact checkers that it simply wouldn’t be possible for HAARP to cause earthquakes.

Operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, HAARP is a high-frequency transmitter that studies the Earth's upper atmosphere by sending radio waves to create small, observable electron disturbances that mimic those that occur in nature.

When HAARP was similarly linked to a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey in 2023, Rachel Abercrombie, a seismologist at Boston University, reportedly told fact checkers at USA Today that “nobody has the ability to intentionally create a large earthquake with any degree of certainty”.

She also added that human activities, such as building large water reservoirs and fracking can induce earthquakes, but “never as large as this”.

Jonathan Stewart, an environmental engineering professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, also reportedly told USA Today that induced earthquakes do not reach magnitudes above the mid-5 range.

The ‘doublet’ earthquakes in Venezuela reached magnitude 7.2 and magnitude 7.5.

Responding to similar claims linking HAARP to the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, HAARP program manager Jessica Matthews reportedly told fact checkers at Politifact: “The research equipment at the HAARP site cannot create or amplify natural disasters.”

Although earthquakes cannot be predicted, scientists in Venezuela had previously highlighted the likelihood of severe earthquakes occurring in the region at some point due to the slip rates of two tectonic plates, the Caribbean Plate and the South American Plate.

We’ve fact checked false claims about HAARP many times before. Social media users often accuse governments of using it to alter the weather or cause natural disasters.

Misinformation about significant weather events and natural disasters can spread quickly on social media, so it’s important to consider whether what you are seeing is genuine before sharing, and our misinformation toolkit can help.