WatchTheMed Alarm Phone Investigations – 8th of November 2018
Case name: 2018_11_08-CM142
Situation: Boat rescued to Italy
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Thursday, the 8th of November 2018, the Alarm Phone was called at 19.09h CET from a boat in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea. The call was quickly interrupted but we were able to re-establish contact at 19.36h when the anxious passengers told us that there were women and children on a plastic dinghy. No further information could be gathered during this phone conversation. Later we received their GPS position which we passed on to MRCC Rome at 21.01h. We also sent the information we had gathered to the UNHCR, the civil NGO vessel Mare Jonio and the reconnaissance aircraft Moonbird.

At 22.02h we saw that the satellite phone on the boat had nearly run out of credit and we re-charged their phone so that they could continue to reach out. At 22.35h we received the information from a contact person that there were 27 people in total on the boat, including 8 women and 6 children. The last contact to the boat had been at 22.24h. The contact person also forwarded a new GPS position, showing them south-west of Lampedusa.

At 22.46h, we passed this position on to MRCC Rome as well as the civil rescuers. Mare Jonio stated that it would be ready to engage if called upon by MRCC Rome. At 23.55h, the contact person informed us that the satellite phone on board was not functioning anymore, probably as they had run out of battery. Around the same time, another contact person informed us about the same case, with the additional information that the boat had probably left from Zuwarah/Libya already on Wednesday evening, so about 30 hours earlier. The travellers were from Morocco, Sudan and Algeria.

At 00.53am, MRCC Rome confirmed that the boat had been rescued and the passengers brought to Lampedusa. We informed the other civil rescuers. On the day, 150 people arrived on Lampedusa. According to Mare Junio, the Maltese and Italian authorities – though knowing of the people in distress – delayed to coordinate a SAR operation for about 9 hours, thereby putting the lives of the travellers acutely at risk.