Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 21st of January 2016

Case name: 2016_01_21-CM54
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to boat with 500 travellers in distress north of Zuwara/Libya; all rescued
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Thursday the 21st of January 2016 at 9.46am the Alarm Phone was alerted to a boat in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea by Father Mussie Zerai. He provided us with the GPS position and a satellite phone number of the travellers and told us that there were about 500 persons on board of the boat in distress, including 50 women and 10 children. The boat was located quite close to the Libyan coast north of Zuwara, but already in international waters. We tried to call the satellite phone immediately afterwards but were not able to reach the travellers. Instead we sent a short message to their phone and asked them, to call the number of the Alarm Phone by themselves. At 10am we called the Italian coastguard. They had already been informed about the boat by Father Zerai and confirmed to us that they were preparing a rescue operation. Father Zerai informed us that he was not able to communicate with the travellers as there were only Arabic-speaking travellers on board of the boat. Thus we contacted an Arabic-translator from our network, who started to communicate directly with the travellers in Arabic. Beyond that, we checked the credit of the satellite phone and charged it, as the credit was very low. At 11am we were able to receive an updated position with the help of the translator, the boat had moved about 10 kilometres further north. At 11.35am we realized that another person had also charged the satellite phone’s credit with a large amount. Afterwards, Father Zerai took over the case again. In the late evening, at 11pm, he confirmed to us that the boat had been rescued and all 500 travellers were saved.