Not necessarily lying or trolling. Persons with a low anxiety threshold may post (and re-post) a single report or rumour, not realizing that they thereby create problems rather than assist.
This is probably a part of the answer. Many reports we heard sounded almost like recordings they were so similar. I found myself anticipating some of this dialog just based on previous dialogs. As I noted earlier, when someone tried to inform listeners that the dam failure probably applied to a different geographic area than the one for their channel it was quickly followed by a person repeating that the dam was about to fail, the Coast Guard was right there with him, etc. I decided that someone either had a narrative they wanted to follow or that they didn't realize they were not on the Houston channel any more.