Calls for Help Revealed as Hoax

Residents were outraged Tuesday by an elaborate hoax that captured the nation’s heart and fooled even President Hugo Chavez in the midst of the country’s disastrous flooding.

Officials said a series of cellular telephone calls aired on live radio from a man claiming to be trapped in an underground garage with his family had been traced to a Caracas neighborhood unaffected by floods and mudslides that killed thousands of people last week.

“In these tragedies there are heroes and there are vermin too,” Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel said.

The ruse began Saturday when the man called a local radio station, purportedly from a town devastated by the mudslides.