Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 22nd of September 2016

Case name: 2016_09_22-WM121
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 19 travellers in distress in Western Med, rescued to Spain
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Thursday, the 22nd of September 2016, at 9.38am, the Alarm Phone received a call from a number in Morocco, but communication was very difficult. In another call from the same number, at 9.45am, we learned that the person calling us was missing news from relatives on a boat. However, we were neither able to find out from where the travellers had left, nor any other details. At 9.51am, another person called the Alarm Phone from Morocco and informed us about a boat in distress, with about 20 people on board. We asked again from where the travellers had started and where they were heading to and the contact person promised to call the travellers back in order to obtain this information. At 10.20am, we received the phone number of the travellers in distress, but were not able to reach them directly. Thus we sent an SMS to them at 10.27am and asked them to call us back. At 11.06am, we learned from the second contact person that a pregnant woman was on board of the boat in distress and that the group had left Nador/Morocco the day before at 3pm. He confirmed that there were about 20 people on board. However, he had lost contact to the group at 11pm the day before and was very worried. He had already called the Moroccan coastguard, but he was told that they had not found anybody. At 11.30am, we alerted the Spanish rescue organization Salvamento Maritimo (S.M.). We were told that they had rescued a boat with 11 travellers on board and that they knew that the Moroccan coastguard had rescued another boat in distress. S.M. promised to call the Moroccans again and we agreed on another call 30 minutes later. At about noon, we called S.M. again. We were told that the Moroccan Marine had rescued two boats in distress in the night before, however, the details provided for both boats did not match our information. Beyond that, S.M. promised to call one of their contact persons in Morocco and to call our second contact person on their own. At 12.25am, we sent an email to the Spanish authorities, informing them about our alert in written form. At 1.30pm, S.M. from Almeria replied to our email, informing us that they had just found a boat with 19 travellers on board, including a pregnant woman. They promised to send a helicopter to pick up the pregnant women. At 1.45pm, we talked to the second contact person again, but were not able to receive any further information. However, at 2pm, the same person told us in another call that the travellers on board of the boat in distress had been rescued. At 2.53pm, we received information from another source that confirmed the rescue, yet it remained unclear whether the group had been brought to Spain or back to Morocco. Afterwards, we repeatedly tried to reach the number of the travellers and the two contact persons, but without success. Finally, at 5.23pm, we reached the second contact person again and he confirmed to us that the travellers had been brought to Spain.