Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 29th of August 2016

Case name: 2016_08_29CM81
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to boat in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Monday the 29th of August 2016, an Alarm Phone member was contacted by someone calling from a Thuraya satellite phone at 8.17am. While no information could be shared in the initial call, we were able to upload the satellite phone with credit, as it had nearly no credit left. After several unsuccessful attempts to reach the phone, we received a call from the Thuraya phone at 8.55am, but communications were difficult and eventually broke down. It was clear, however, that the caller was on a boat. At 9.02am we called the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome (MRCC) and passed on the phone number. At 9.11am we received a call from a contact person in Morocco who reported that a friend of his had reached out to him with the same Thuraya number to inform him that he had successfully made it onto an Italian boat after having left Libya on a boat. We tried to call the phone repeatedly but it was not reachable. Also we saw that its credit had not gone down, so it had not been used in the meantime. At 5.35pm MRCC Rome confirmed that the boat in question had been rescued by an Italian vessel. All in all, about 5.500 people were rescued on the day.