Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 13th of December 2017

Case name: 2017_12_13-WM197
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to emergency situation in the Western Med
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Wednesday the 13th of December 2017, our Alarm Phone shift team was informed at 4.30pm by a man in Morocco about the departure of a boat, carrying 53 people, including 5 women, who had left from Nador/Morocco at around midnight. He said that they wanted to reach Malaga and last time he spoke to them, at 9am in the morning, they already seemed to have been close to Spain. Since that call, he had lost contact and was worried about their well-being. The boat had an engine. At 5.01pm, we spoke to the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo (SM) and they stated that they had rescued 3 vessels, but none of them matched with the description of the boat in question. They also stated that 4 other boats had been intercepted by Morocco, but they could not give us further detail about the composition of these boats. At 6.36pm, our contact person in Morocco had still not heard about the whereabouts of the people. At 8.04pm, SM told us that the Spanish Guardia Civil had informed them about this boat – the people had arrived in Malaga, and there were 5 women on board. Shortly afterwards, when we spoke to our initial contact person, he confirmed that he had just heard from the boat-people – they had safely reached Malaga on their own.