No Sharks In Harvey Floodwaters: 5 Myths Debunked

HOUSTON, TX — Calm down, there have been no reports of sharks swimming on flooded highways around Houston, despite what pictures floating around on social media in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey might suggest. A fresh hoax came Monday, when a Photoshopped picture showed what looked like the finned menace swimming near a car plowing through a flooded freeway.

“Believe it or not,” began the Twitter user who hyped the bogus photo. Save yourself some embarrassment and choose the latter. The photo is a fake, and it was a fake 12 years ago when it popped up after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans. The photo had been thoroughly debunked on the internet hours after it resurfaced Monday.

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Here is the debunked tweet:

That said, emergency officials are warning flood victims not to wade in the water to avoid encounters with alligators, snakes and fire ants seeking higher ground from the rising swamp. But not every alligator picture on social media is the real deal.

Christy Kroboth, who runs a business that retrieves errant alligators from places they’re not supposed to be, wrote on Facebook that people are taking old photos from her Houston Gator Squad page, which is a copyright infringement, and deliberately putting them on social media to scare the living daylights out of people.

Here are three other things you shouldn’t believe:

Numbers supposedly for the Texas National Guard, which deployed its 12,000 troops to assist in Harvey rescues, that were circulated on Facebook were actually for an insurance company’s claims department.

In a statement, the Foremost Insurance Group said the original post was created by an “unidentified person not associated with our company” and that it “truly cares about our customers and all Texas residents affected by this disaster and regrets any frustration experienced by those who saw the misinformation.

The U.S. Coast Guard also used Twitter to expose another scam that is misdirecting people in immediate need of rescue. The number to call is 911, or one of the numbers posted on the Coast Guard’s official Facebook and Twitter pages. Coast Guard units from around the country’s seaports are heading to Texas and Louisiana to assist those stranded in Harvey’s floods.

Finally, one of these presidents is not like the other. The New York Times exposed this Harvey-related political trickery: The DailyDems website posted a 2015 photo of President Obama and his family serving Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C., after Obama praised emergency workers for their response to the catastrophe. “Fmr. President Obama Tweets about Houston Flooding, Now THIS Is How A President Should Act.,” the headline on the non-story read.

The inference, of course, is that the current president doesn’t give a hoot about the devastation in Texas. In fact, Trump toured Harvey-ravaged Texas on Tuesday, stopping first in Corpus Christi and then continuing the damage assessment tour in Austin.

Photo: Demetres Fair holds a towel over his daughter Damouri Fair, 2, as they are rescued by boat by members of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the Houston Fire Department during flooding from Tropical Storm Harvey in Houston. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)