Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 9th of March 2019

Case name: 2019_03_09-WM377
Situation: 42 travellers from Tangier brought back to Morocco
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case:

On Saturday, 9th of March, at 4:50am CET, we were informed about a boat in distress in the Strait of Gibraltar. We called the travellers at 4:52am. They had left from Tangier two hours earlier, but their engine had broken down and their boat was in a critical condition. According to them, they were still close to Morocco, and they asked us to inform MRCC Rabat. We couldn’t figure out their GPS position. We passed the telephone number of MRCC Rabat to the travellers and called the Moroccan authorities at 5:03am, but couldn’t reach anyone. At 5:05am we informed the Spanish rescue organisation Salvamento Marítimo in Tarifa, that promised to coordinate with MRCC Rabat. At 5:08am and 5:14am we had contact to the travellers again. They specified that they had left east of Tanger Med. At 5:18am we called Salvamento again to pass the new information. Afterwards, we couldn’t reach the travellers for a while. At 5:50am, we wrote an email to the respective authorities to document and emphasize the alert. At 6:12am Salvamento called the Alarm Phone, asking for news themselves as they had lost contact to the boat too. At 6:36am we called MRCC Rabat. The responding officer told us that the Marine Royale was informed and would still search for the boat. At 7:42am we finally reached the travellers. They confirmed that they had been rescued by the Moroccan Marine Royale and that everyone that was on board had arrived safely back to Morocco.