Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations, 31st of August 2015

Case name: 2015_08_31-WM48
Situation: 2 vessels rescued by Salvamento Maritimo, Spain
Status of WTM Investigations: Concluded
Place of Incidents: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Monday, the 31st of August 2015, the Alarm Phone was alerted to two distress situations in the Western Mediterranean. The first alert came in at 9:37am: A contact person gave us the telephone number of travellers on a small plastic vessel. We reached them and they told us that they were tired and exhausted. They did not know about their exact position, but said that they had left from Malabata at 2 AM and thought they were close to Tarifa. They asked us to call Salvamento Maritimo. In a second call, they clarified that they were 8 persons and that they drifted without an engine. Moreover, the boat started to loose air and due to the foggy weather they could not see far. They agreed that we forward their number to the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo (SM). We called SM Tarifa and passed on all the information that we had received. Half an hour later we called the travellers again. They told us that they were not moving anymore. We advised them to keep calm and informed them that a rescue operation could take a couple of hours. As promised, we called to check on them every fifteen minutes. As time passed, they got more desperate, thirsty, and hungry and they were freezing. Twice they heard a noise of a boat but did not see anything due to the fog.

At 12.11pm we called them again. Somebody picked up, but nobody spoke. In the background we heard a lot of shouting, apparently they tried to draw someone's attention on them. Eventually the call was interrupted without us being able to obtain further information. Fifteen minutes later we called again, the phone was switched off. Also the person who had given us their contact could not be reached anymore. At half past twelve we called SM to ask about the ongoing rescue operation. The response given was unclear. Apparently both SM and the Moroccan Navy were operating in the area. At 1pm, we managed to reach the travellers again. We hardly understood them, due to background noises, but one of them was on the phone and thanked us several times. We sent a message and asked for a confirmation of the rescue by SM. At 1.32pm a contact person in Morocco confirmed the rescue by SM and told us that all travellers were in good health.

At quarter to twelve, we received a call about a second case in the same area. A contact person informed us about a second zodiac that had also left from Malabata at 3am and was now lost in the fog. Seven persons were on board, among them minors. Apparently they were also without an engine. SM had not yet been informed. We first tried to get in touch with the travellers before calling SM. They told us that a rescue vessel was already searching in the area for the first boat we had alerted them to. They promised to forward the information concerning the second vessel to the rescue vessel. At 12:05pm we called again the travellers. The number was busy. We then received another number of one of the persons on the vessel. We passed on this second number to SM and asked about the ongoing rescue operation. They told us that the second vessel had not yet been found. We tried to call the people on the vessel again. After a failed attempt, we reached them: They told us that they had no idea where they are, that they only saw water and that the water sent them "from right to left and forwards and backwards". At 1.24pm in another call to the zodiac travellers, we got the good news that SM had rescued them.