FALSE: Emergency hotline numbers for rescue

At a glance:

• Claim: A list of telephone numbers are the emergency hotlines for rescue.
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: At least 3 of the numbers provided are wrong.
• Why we fact checked this: This claim was emailed to Rappler for verification during Typhoon Ulysses (Vamco). Similar posts were also flagged by Facebook’s Claim Check tool and have accumulated thousands of shares since they were posted.

Complete details:

A post circulating on Facebook provides a list of supposed emergency hotlines for rescue amid Typhoon Ulysses (Vamco).

This is false. At least 3 of the numbers on the list are wrong.

On Twitter, Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto called out the post, saying the hotline number indicated for Pasig was wrong.

Numbers like those of the Caloocan City Chapter of the Philippine Red Cross and San Juan City are wrong too.

Landlines in the Greater Metro Manila Area have also been updated to have 8-digit phone numbers, not 7 like the numbers indicated on the list. Telecommunications providers changed their 7-digit landline numbers to 8-digits in October 2019, in compliance with the National Telecommunications Commission’s (NTC) directive.

This claim was emailed to Rappler for verification.

Facebook’s fact check tool Claim Check also flagged similar posts shared on Thursday, November 12, as potentially misleading. One such post by the page “GHOST Wrecker” has 31,000 reactions, 1,900 comments, and more than 40,000 shares. Singer and actress Donnalyn Bartolome also shared a similar post that has 17,000 reactions, 384 comments, and 4,900 shares as of writing. – Rappler.com