Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigation – 2nd of September 2015

Case name: 2015_09_02-CM43
Situation: 3 boats carrying approximately 1500 travellers in distress, all rescued
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Wednesday, September 2nd 2015, the Alarm Phone was alerted by father Mussie Zerai to three boats in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea. At 6.30am he informed us about two vessels in distress on their way to Italy. The vessels carried about 700 persons each. At 7am, we managed to reach the travellers of the 1st vessel who told us that they had left five hours earlier from Libya and that there were pregnant women and children on board. We informed the Italian coastguard, but they since we did not have any coordinates, the person on duty was not very cooperative.. At 7.18am we received a call directly from the boat and were given their GPS coordinates. We thus reached out (again) to the Maltese and the Italian coastguards and passed on the coordinates of the vessel. This time, the Italian coastguard promised to help. At 8.15am we called them again to ask about the ongoing rescue operation. The travellers had told us about a big ship and a helicopter in vicinity. They confirmed that a rescue operation was taking place .

The 2nd vessel could not be reached by phone, thus we could not obtain more information about their situation. We checked the satellite phone accounts of both phones and saw that the travellers of the 2nd vessel had used their phone, as their credit went down. We recharged their phone and passed on their coordinates and contact details to the Italian coastguard as well.

The alert about the 3rd distress case came in at 2.30pm. Father Zerai sent us a text message with a contact number of another vessel off the Libyan coast. When trying to contact the vessel, we realized that a digit in the number was missing. At 3.15pm father Mussie Zerai sent us the correct number and the information that the vessel was small and carrying 70 persons. We immediately contacted the travellers. However, the phone connection was poor, so that we sent a text message asking about their current position. Only one hour later after about 20 attempts, we reached the vessel and received their coordinates, which we passed on immediately to the Italian coastguard.

At 6.50pm, the Italian coastguard confirmed in a phone call that all three boats were rescued and that all travellers were safe. We passed on the good news to father Zerai.