Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 16th of July 2019

Case name: 2019_07_16-WM403
Situation: approximately 150 travelers on two boats rescued by Salvamento Marítimo
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case:
On Tuesday, 16th of July at 8:52pm CEST our shift team was informed about a convoy of two boats that had embarked from Nador, Morocco, at 5:00am local time. According to the contact person who informed us, one boat was carrying 72 people, among them 21 women and 3 children. We received a phone number from the boat. From then on, we tried to call the people but could not establish a connection neither via phone call nor via WhatsApp.
At 10:09pm we received further information from the contact person: The two boats had left at the same place at the same time, one, carrying 74 people, was a blue zodiac with a Suzuki motor and 30 horsepower, the other one, carrying 72 people, was grey. The last direct contact between the contact person and the travelers had been at 7:00am that morning.
At 10:30pm we called SM Tarifa to ask if they had information about the boats, but they were not informed about them and redirected us to SM Almeria. They informed us that they had been informed about two boats, one with 74 persons and one with 75 persons. They had located one boat and would be there in 30 minutes, still searching for the other boat. We should call again in 60 minutes for update.
At this point we could not be sure this was the same group we were dealing with or another case.
At 11:14pm our contact person transferred to us some of the names of the travelers on one boat. At 11:38pm we called SM Almeria again and learned that they had rescued one boat with 71 people, among them 12 women and one baby. These numbers made us assume they were not the group we had been alerted to. SM had an aircraft on scene now, to go on searching. We passed the phone number of the people on one of the boats and agreed to send the list of names via e-mail, and SM would inform the Alarm Phone when there was new information.
At 11:39pm we tried to contact the travelers again but without success.

At 11:55pm we received another list of names of people on the second (blue) boat and learned that the first list was from the grey boat.
At 00:24am we double-checked the info we had collected and clarified that among the group of 72 people there were 24 women instead of 21. We sent an e-mail to SM Almeria with all the collected information about the two boats.
During the night we still could not establish a connection to the travelers but at 03:20am we were informed that both boats had just been rescued by Salvamento Marítimo but one woman had died.
The next day, 17th of July, our shift team tried to get a direct confirmation of the rescue by the travelers but could not reach them. At 1:48pm we called SM to ask for a confirmation by their side and were told to call again after they had checked. At 5:44pm we received the information by SM Almeria that they had rescued two bats with corresponding numbers of people and matching numbers of women and children, so we regarded this as final confirmation of the rescue.