Shock at news ‘ trapped’ girl didn’t exist
Anger at how story spread and took focus away from other rescue efforts
Hour after excruciating hour, Mexicans were transfixed by dramatic efforts to reach a young girl thought buried in the rubble of a school in Mexico City destroyed by Wednesday’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake.
She reportedly wiggled her fingers, told rescuers her name and said there were others trapped near her. Rescue workers called for tubes, pipes and other tools to reach her.
News media, officials and volunteer rescuers all repeated the story of “Frida Sofia” with a sense of urgency that made it a national drama, drawing attention away from other rescue efforts across the quake- stricken city and leaving people in Mexico and abroad glued to their television sets.
But she never existed, Mexican navy officials now say.
“We want to emphasise that we have no knowledge about the report that emerged with the name of a girl,” navy Assistant Secretary Angel Enrique Sarmiento said yesterday. “We never had any knowledge about that report, and we do not believe — we are sure — it was not a reality.”
Sarmiento said a camera lowered into the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen school showed blood tracks where an injured person apparently dragged himself or herself, and the only person still listed as missing was a school employee. But it was just blood tracks — no fingers wiggling, no voice, no name.
Several dead people have been removed from the rubble, and it could have been their fingers rescuers thought they saw move.
Sarmiento later apologised for being so categorical, saying that if a person is still trapped it could be a child or an adult.
“The information existing at this moment doesn’t allow us to say if it is an adult or a child,” Sarmiento said. “As long as there is the slightest possibility of someone alive, we will continue searching with the same energy.”
Twitter users quickly brought out the “Fake News” tag and complained that the widespread coverage had distracted attention from real rescue efforts where victims have been pulled from the rubble — something Forbes The Catalan regional leader yesterday said he would press on with an October 1 referendum on a split from Spain, flouting a court ban, as tens of thousands gathered for a second day on the streets of Barcelona demanding the right to vote. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont said he had contingency plans in place to ensure the vote would go ahead, directly defying Madrid and pushing the country closer to political crisis. Spain’s Constitutional Court banned the vote this month after Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said it violated the 1978 constitution, which states the country is indivisible. Most opposition parties are against the vote. Facebook is slowly acknowledging the outsized — if unintended — role it played in last year’s US presidential elections. Bowing to pressure from lawmakers and the public, the company said it will provide the contents of 3000 ads bought by a Russian agency to congressional investigators, while also pledging to make political advertising on its platform more “transparent”. “I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook video. “That’s not what we stand for.” The Navajo Nation will sue the Trump Administration if it tries to reduce the size of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, its top lawyer told Reuters yesterday, ahead of the release of a broad government review of such sites across the country. President Donald Trump had ordered the Interior Department to examine whether 27 national monuments designated by past presidents could be reduced or rescinded to make way for oil and gas drilling and other economic development. The results have not been announced, but a leak of the review shows the Interior Department will recommend shrinking some sites, including Bears Ears, which the Navajo and other tribes consider sacred.