A false emergency number, the radar of the meteorological station broken down, or even a dam which has collapsed and which threatens villages… Since the start of the floods which affect the south of the Valencia region, in Spain, false information is increasing on social networks. To the point of creating psychosis among residents, so much so that the authorities must take time to deny and reassure people.
From Tuesday evening, as the floods intensified in the south of the Valencia region, residents called the emergency number in Spain, 112, to be rescued or to warn of the situation in certain villages submerged by the water. The number of calls is such that many of them can no longer be processed by the authorities and waiting times are very long. On social networks, some are taking the opportunity to make people believe that an alternative emergency number is to be preferred, “963 428 000”. Except that this number is false, it does not exist. However, the posts are widely shared and add confusion to the chaotic situation experienced by residents there.
It is the authorities themselves who end up defusing the misinformation by reminding that the one and only number that works is 112, but that a help number for relatives of missing people has been activated, the “900 365 112”.
Many residents of the south of the Valencia region wondered why they had been notified on their phones so late by the region. For many, they received a warning message late, in the early evening when the floods had already started. On social networks, many posts point to the responsibility of the Spanish meteorological agency, Aemet, the equivalent of our Météo France. According to these posts, their radar in the Valencia region is broken and this is why it is impossible to anticipate the next course of events. False information which further creates confusion and panic, to the point, again, that the main person concerned had to react.
Aemet denounces “a hoax” and specifies that its radar in Valencia has been working well without interruption since Monday October 28. It even publishes the report of the radar connections between October 28 and 29 at the time of the floods. Moreover, from Tuesday October 29 in the morning, the The Agency has issued a red flood risk alert for the Valencia region.
Authorities have spent a lot of time in recent days denying false information coming from social media.
For example, several very viral publications claimed that communities had been evacuated after a dam broke. The posts even call for fleeing the surrounding villages.
He is ultimately the fire chief of the Valence region, José Miguel Basset, who will deny this information during a press conference. In the extract shared on the X account of Spanish emergencies, he explains that a “false message is circulating saying that there has been a rupture of a dam, that the municipalities in the affected area must be evacuated, but that this is false, no water reserve system has been interrupted and no city did not have to be evacuated“. He also recommends that citizens stay at home and “not to use any terrestrial means of communication”.
Despite all the false information circulating on social networks, some are true, but so spectacular that they are presented as false.
This is the case of a photo where we see more than a hundred cars piled up, even crushed, in a small street. The photo has millions of views on X, and people are denouncing a fake photo, generated by artificial intelligence.
Except this photo is real. It was taken in a small town in the south of the Valencia region by Spanish photographer David Ramos.
