Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 21st of January 2020

Case name: 2020_01_21-WM447
Situation: 26 travelers (5women, 1 pregnant, 1 baby) started from Dakhla, Morocco, rescued the next afternoon by Salvamiento Marítimo Las Palmas.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case:
On 21 January 2020 at 04:20pm CET, the Alarm Phone was contacted by the relative of a person in a group of 26 travelers. The relative told us that there were among them six women, one of them pregnant and one baby. They had left from Dakhla, Western Sahara, Morocco towards Las Palmas at 2:00am. Since then, there had been no contact.
At 04:33pm our shift team tried to reach the travelers via different phone numbers and via WhatsApp messages, but they could not be reached and did not receive the messages. We asked the relative for more information about the boat type and colour and at 04:56pm, we called the Spanish Search and Rescue organization Salvamento Marítimo (SM) of Las Palmas, reporting about the missing people. They did not have any information about the boat and told us they would check with the local police from the Canary Islands. At 05:54pm we talked to SM again. They said they would send out a plane the next day at 2:00pm, which would be the calculated time that the boat should arrive in their Search and Rescue Zone. They had also informed the Moroccan Authorities about the case. Meanwhile the travelers were still not contactable. At 07:40pm we asked SM Las Palmas for news but there were none. During the night and the next day neither we nor the relative could get through to the people on the boat. At 03:08pm we called the SM Las Palmas again. They reported to have sent out a plane and had found a boat carrying 26 people, among them five women and one baby who were rescued and now on their way to Las Palmas. They gave us a description of this boat. At 03:19pm we contacted the relative again who had just learned from someone in Dakhla that the people had been rescued. The description of the boat matched, so we considered it as confirmed that the rescued people were the ones were had been investigating about, although we could not get a direct confirmation of the travelers.