Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 1st of November 2019

Case name: 2019_11_01-CM208
Situation: approx. 40 travelers (7 women, 2 sick people) in Maltese SAR-Zone, started from Libya, rescued to Malta by Maltese Coastguard.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case:

On 1st of November at 03:20pm CET the Alarm Phone received a call from a group of travelers in distress. They reported there were approximately 40 people on a blue wooden boat, among them seven women and two sick people. The engine was only working slowly. They had started from Zuwarah, Libya, the day before and according to their GPS location, they were in the Maltese Search and Rescue zone. At 03:35pm we informed the Maltese Coastguard via phone call and e-mail and passed them the GPS location and phone number from the boat. At 04:21pm we received a new location from the travelers and passed it to the Maltese Coastguard. At 05:40pm we called the Maltese Coastguard again and learned that they had taken over the responsibility to coordinate the rescue mission and had sent out a rescue vessel. We agreed to call them back at 09:00pm to ask for a confirmation of the rescue, and to inform them anytime if we had new information from the travelers. At 06:42pm the Maltese Coastguard called us to make sure we did not call the travelers too frequently, because it was important to save the battery. We agreed to only call once per hour. At 07:10pm the Maltese Coastguard called us to ask if we had a new GPS location from the people, which we had not. We could not get through to the travelers anymore. At 09:08pm we called the Maltese Coastguard and received the confirmation of the rescue of the travelers.