Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 10h of April 2019

Case name: 2019_04_10-CM155
Situation: 28 people in distress off Libya and Tunisia, 8 missing, survivors intercepted to Libya
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case:

On Wednesday, 10th of April, at 5:45am CEST, we were contacted by a boat in distress in the Central Mediterranean. The travellers informed us that they had left from around Abu Khammash/Libya at around 10pm the night before. Their engine had fallen in the water, so they couldn’t move any more. We asked them to send us a GPS position and recharged their Thuraya, so that they would be able to continue the communication. We informed the light aircraft Moonbird of Sea-Watch and HPI that was about to start its mission and would try to spot the boat from the sky. At 6:40am the travellers called the Alarm Phone. They informed us that they had left Libya with 28 people on board, but 8 people had fallen into the water and had gone missing. Only 20 survivors had managed to stay on board.
At 6:55am we managed to receive the GPS position of the boat, that was clearly outside Libyan territorial waters. At 7am we called MRCC Rome and alerted them to the distress situation, not receiving any feedback whether an SAR operation would be launched. We also passed all information in an email to the MRCC to document the alert. At 7:21am we informed the Tunisian Coast Guard as well via phone call and email.

So both Tunisian and Italian authorities were alerted since about 7am CEST.

We stayed in touch with the travellers. They reported that water was entering the boat and their phone battery was at 60 % by then. We asked for an updated position that we received eventually at 8:06am. We sent an email with the updated position to the respective authorities. We also started to alert via twitter. We also passed the information to MRCC Rome, that still didn’t provide us with any information on a SAR operation. We called the Tunisian Coast Guard as well, that simply refused to take down the updated position of the travellers. At 8:35am the travellers called again. They reported seeing and airplane. The situation on board was getting worse.
At 8:38am we tried to reach out to the so-called Libyan Coast Guard (scLYCG), even if we don’t consider them as a responsible SAR authority. We called several numbers, but couldn’t reach any officer in charge.
At 8:50am we received a message from Moonbird that had spotted the boat and could provide an description of the boat and an updated position. At 9:11am we tried again to reach the scLYCG on several phone lines, but not a single number was operative. We stayed in touch with the travellers that kept us updated about their condition. At 9:21 we called several numbers of the Tunisian Coast Guard again. One responding officer confirmed that Tunisia would coordinate the SAR with MRCC Rome and Libya, as the boat would be in the zone of Libyan responsibility. In the next hour, we couldn’t reach Tunisian authorities any more in order to get more information. Moonbird informed us that a military airplane had arrived and dropped life rafts and smoke cans in order to mark the position of the boat. We spoke to the travellers, that informed us that an airplane had dropped ‘something’. Fortunately, the travellers had not tried to reach out to the rafts as they were dropped far away from them and an attempt to reach them would have been highly dangerous, with no rescue boat in sight.
At 10:25am we received the information that Moonbird had to leave the area for refuelling, but would try to start a second mission in order to monitor the situation from above.
In the meantime, we tried to raise pressure through twitter and local NGOs. At 10:45am we managed to reach the authorities in the closest Tunisian port of Zarzis and alerted them to the distress situation. The contact to the travellers was still stable but the condition of the people on board was worsening constantly and the battery of the Thuraya was going down. At 11:04am, we passed the phone number of MRCC Rome to the travellers that had decided to reach out to the authorities directly. At 11:27am we called MRCC Malta as well, that reported having been informed, but couldn’t provide us with any information concerning an SAR operation. At 11:30am, we talked to the boat again that reported having talked to MRCC Rome, but the responding officer had not given them any information on their rescue. We passed the number of the Tunisian Coast Guard to the travellers as well. Ourselves we reached MRCC Tunis at 11:59am. The officer stated that even the Tunisian authorities couldn’t reach the scLibyan Coast Guard. Nevertheless, they still referred to the scLYCG as the responsible authority. They also stated that Tunisia wouldn’t have any rescue assets in the respective region.
At 12:02am we sent another email to all regional SAR authorities with a summary of all information, the actual situation and the request for immediate assistance, insisting on the responsibility of MRCC Rome as the travellers themselves had reached out to the authority.
At 1:30pm we managed to reach the port of Zarzis again. The captain of the port agreed to contact the authorities in charge himself to ask for permission to launch an SAR operation. At 1:52am the Tunisian Coast Guard informed us that they the Libyan authorities would send a rescue ship to the boat. We stayed in contact to the travellers every 20 minutes, but had agreed to reduce the calls in order to save the battery of their phone.
At 2:35pm we called MRCC Tunis again. The responding officer passed us an operative phone number of the scLYCG where we would be able to reach the commander in charge of the SAR. We mentioned that the captain of the port of Zarzis would launch an SAR operation if he would receive the permission of the MRCC. The officer responding promised to follow up on this option with his superiors. Afterwards we tried several times to reach the Libyan number that Tunis had passed us to talk to the officer in charge, but we couldn’t reach anyone.

7,5 hours after our initial alert, responsibilities were still shifted from authority to authority and worst, to a non-reachable and probably non-operative Libyan Coast Guard.

At 2:51pm we finally managed to speak to an officer responding at another number of the scLYCG. The officer would not give us further information but referred us to the same number that had been given to us by MRCC Tunis. At 3pm we were in contact again with the travellers on board that were very exhausted from all these hours drifting at sea without any hope for rescue.
In the next hour, we tried continuously to reach the commander of the scLYCG, but without getting through. At 3:52pm we received an email of MRCC Rome stating that ‘JRCC Libya’ would coordinate the rescue and on behalf of them, Rome had broadcast the information of the distress to al vessels in transit in the respective area. At 4:02pm we reached the travellers again and asked for an updated GPS position. At 4:10pm, we reached MRCC Tunis, but the officer hung up after hearing our introduction as Alarm Phone. In the meantime, Moonbird had started its second mission and arrived at the scene. At 4:15pm, they informed us that a Spanish military aircraft, the COTOS45 of EuNavFor Med, had arrived in the respective area.
At 4:39pm we received an actual position of the boat that we passed on to MRCC Rome, informing them as well that neither scLYCG nor the Tunisian Coast Guard was reachable. MRCC Rome wouldn’t provide us any information whether a rescue operation had been launched in the meantime. At 4:59pm Moonbird informed us that they had to leave back to the base. At 5:05pm, we talked to the travellers, their phone battery was at 15 %. At 6:10pm the Spanish aircraft left the area, so no more aerial supervision was conducted, and our connection to the travellers became even more crucial, but with their battery dying and sunset approaching, we were running against time. We tried to call the Tunisian and Libyan authorities constantly, but were either ignored or put on hold. At 7:40pm we couldn’t reach the Thuraya anymore and since we had been monitoring their credit, we knew that they had not made calls in the meantime. At 8pm we called MRCC Malta and asked them to reach out to the 4 commercial vessels in the vicinity, but the authority refused to engage, stating only that the scLYCG would be responsible for coordinating the rescue.
At 8:05pm we reached MRCC Rome that informed us that the scLYCG had found the boat and had picked up the travellers. We never reached the travellers again in order to find out what happened to them after their ‘rescue’, that we cannot be relieved about as they were taken back to a violence-torn country that cannot be considered a safe haven for anyone.