Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 26th of October 2019
Case name: 2019_10_26-CM207
Situation: Two groups of travellers rescued by civil SAR organisations. The fate of one traveller remains unclear.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Saturday the 26th of October the Alarm Phone was alerted to two boats in distress in the central Mediterranean Sea. One group of 45 travellers were rescued by Open Arms, after Italian and Maltese authorities failed to live up to their responsibility to rescue. Out of another group of 92 travellers, 91 were rescued by the civil search and rescue vessel Alan Kurdi, whilst the fate of one traveller remains unclear.

At 11.44am CET the Alarm Phone was called by another group of 91 travellers who had left from Zuwarah on a white rubber boat. They told us that their situation was critical; their engine was not working and water was entering the boat. Also in this case were we able to recharge their satellite phone credit, allowing them to make calls to other. At 12.07pm we sent an email to the relevant rescue authorities along with the civil search and rescue NGO Sea Eye, operating the vessel Alan Kurdi. Shortly after we sent the same information to Open Arms. At 12.14pm we were informed by the civil search and rescue aircraft Moonbird that they had spotted a boat matching our description. They passed this information on to the Italian coastguard after unsuccessfully having tried reaching the so-called Libyan coastguard. Moonbird stayed in the area, and at 1.46pm they informed us that Libyan militia was in the area with speedboats, and that some of the travellers had fallen into the water. Around half an hour later it was denounced via twitter that the crew of Alan Kurdi was being threatened with guns by the Libyan militia, that some travellers were still in the water and that the rescue operation was being obstructed, putting the lives of the 17 crew members of Alan Kurdi and the 92 travellers in danger.
At 3.22pm we got a confirmation that Alan Kurdi had managed to rescue 91 travellers, who were all physically well. At first it was unclear if there were a confusion of the number of travellers so that everyone was safe, but two days later Sea Eye stated that one person remained missing. It is still unclear whether this person was brought back by the Libyan militia, or adds to the devastating number of people who have lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean.

At 7.49pm we were called by a group of 45 travellers, including five women and one child, who had left from Zuwarah in a small wooden boat the previous night at around 10.30pm CET. They sent us their position showing that they were in the Maltese search and rescue zone. Their engine had stopped working as they had run out of petrol, and they were left drifting at sea. They further informed us that some people on the boat were sick. By monitoring their credit online, we could see that they were communicating with others, and we were able to support this by recharging their credit whenever it became low. At 10.22 pm we called the Maltese coastguard, but had problems communicating with them. We therefore calle the Italian coastguard who, however, just told us that the boat was the responsibility of Malta. We therefore called Malta again, but they would not give us any information. Following this, we sent the information we had via email to the coastguard of Malta and Italy as well as the civil search and rescue vessel Open Arms.
At 10.21pm the travellers called us again, telling us that they were scared and still adrift. Our shift team tried to calm them down, but was unfortunately not able to give them any specific update about ongoing rescue operation. When we called the Maltese coastguard 20 minutes later, they were only able to tell us that they were “investigating”, without confirming that a search and rescue operation was taking place. We therefore tweeted about the situation in order to raise awareness about the lack of assistance to the people in distress, and put pressure on the rescue authorities to take action. At 0.40am we received confirmation that Open Arms had carried out the rescue operation, and prevented the potential death of 45 people, which could easily have been the consequence of the European coastguards lack of response to distress calls.